A New Exhibition Featuring Rarely Displayed Rings From the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection

28 Sep 2021

 An exhibition on rings from the Goldsmiths’ Company’s Modern Jewellery Collection, co-curated by Dr Dora Thornton (Curator of the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection) and Dr Frances Parton ( Deputy Curator)  will be available to see exclusively as part of Goldsmiths’ Fair from 28 September – 10 October in Goldsmiths’ Hall in the City of London.

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The exhibition, featuring rarely displayed examples of rings from pioneering makers, shows how from the 1960s artist-jewellers started to explore a visual language that was closer to contemporary art than to more traditional jewellery forms.

Goldsmiths’ Company Curator Dr Dora Thornton says,

“The Goldsmiths’ Company Collection shows clearly that rings were at the forefront of the development of jewellery as modern art in the 1960s and 70s. Groups of rings by leading women makers in particular show how individual designers into the present have recognisable styles which are the logical expression of their approach to design and making. The Company continues to support contemporary makers through commissioning and purchase for its world-class Collection.”

The exhibition represents a rare public opportunity to view exceptional pieces from the Modern Jewellery Collection and to explore selected rings in greater detail in an online exhibition on the Goldsmiths’ Fair website.

The physical exhibition will run throughout the Fair from 28 September – 10 October. The digital exhibition will remain online after the Fair has closed.

“Boasting is out; Beauty is in”

The rings explored in the exhibition have their origins in the International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery at Goldsmiths’ Hall in 1961. The exhibition’s curator, Graham Hughes, was the driving force behind the Collection.

 Graham Hughes, said,

“The demise of the giant rock, is due mostly to societal changes, partly to security, and partly to fashion. For jewellery designers it makes life much easier; boasting is out, beauty is in.”

Rings moved away from enduring Victorian traditions, colours, and motifs. They developed a powerful sculptural feel, grew in size and scope and were worn on any and all fingers, by men and women, singly or stacked in sets, creating new relationships with each other, and with the hand and body.

Pioneers of the ring

The work of three pioneering jewellers forms a major part of the exhibition: Gerda Flӧckinger, Wendy Ramshaw and Dorothy Hogg. Gerda Flӧckinger CBE (b. 1927), as a maker and a teacher, changed the course of modern British jewellery during the 1960s and 70s through radical design, as well as through the course in experimental jewellery that she established at Hornsey College of Art.

Wendy Ramshaw OBE (1939-2018), one of the most important British post-war artist jewellers, presented her iconic sets of stacking rings on turned acrylic stands, emphasising their sculptural role. Ramshaw was one of the first women to be made a Freeman of The Goldsmiths’ Company. She received an OBE in 1993 and a CBE in 2003, and on her death in 2019 the Company held a memorial exhibition of her groundbreaking work.

The lyrical jewellery of renowned Scottish craftswoman Professor Dorothy Hogg OBE (b.1945) incorporates sound and movement together with a meticulous and restrained beauty. Hogg is a pioneer of the square form ring; she has been making rings of this shape since the 1960s and recently made a pair in silver, one with a single ‘leg’ of 18 carat French green gold, especially for the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection in March 2021.

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Source: Goldsmiths’ Fair