> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: [[Damian Skinner]], [[Monica Gaspar]], [[Benjamin Lignel]], [[Kevin Murray]], [[Namita Wiggers]] > Reference:: Skinner, Damian. 2013. __Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective__. Lark, Jewelry & Beading. > Date:: 2013 > Tags:: #jewellery > WeftLinks:: ### Summary The spatial framework proposes an ecological reading of the craft object in relation to the different spaces it inhabits. ### Highlights The Art Jewelry Forum publication [[Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective]] [Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective](https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Jewelry-Perspective-Art-Forum/dp/145470277X), edited by [[Damian Skinner]], proposed a model that expanded the meaning of jewellery beyond the focus on the private world of the bench to include other spaces where it subsequently dwells, such as the magazine’s page, the collector’s drawer, the wearer’s body, the fashions of the street and the things of the world. The excerpt below outlines the spatial framework for understanding contemporary jewellery: --- Part 1 of this book identifies what kinds of objects and practices come under the term contemporary jewelry. Most people working in the contemporary jewelry field would probably agree with the following statements. It's a kind of jewelry, and so it shares things in common with conventional jewelry and also with the wider category of adornment. It's oriented to the body, is often worn, and belongs to a category of objects that are involved in different ways with wearing. It's a kind of craft practice, and it's affected by contact with art on the one hand, and design on the other. It belongs to the wider category of visual arts. But what makes contemporary jewelry unique? What are the singular characteristics that distinguish these objects and practices from other visual arts? In 2011, five writers met in the United States to discuss these questions and to decide how to write about them in this book. The group, consisting of Monica Gaspar, Benjamin Lignel, Kevin Murray, Namita Gupta Wiggers and myself, started by trying to identify contemporary jewelry's particular characteristics. To explore the diversity of contemporary jewelry objects and practices, we began to identify and describe the spaces in which contemporary jewelry is found-the situations, places and events in which it is encountered, discussed, made, presented. **In contrast with art forms such as painting, contemporary jewelry circulates through a more diverse range of situations.** It inhabits not only the walls and plinths of museums, but also the private spaces of collectors' drawers and the body as it moves through the public spaces of the street. Much of the energy in discussions about contemporary jewelry come from having to take these different contexts into account. While contemporary jewelry isn't entirely determined by the spaces in which it circulates, it's sensitive to these spaces, and many contemporary jewelers have decided that actively thinking about the spaces in which their objects circulate is an interesting and productive experiment. By describing the conditions of possibility that shape contemporary jewelry and make it possible for it to exist, it's possible to create a nuanced, open-ended and complex account of the objects and practices that are the subject of this book. The authors of Part l have attempted to create a new theoretical approach to contemporary jewelry- to apply new methods, and to hopefully open a platform for deeper theoretical engagement, a new space for conversation and new thinking to emerge. There's a tradition of writing about contemporary jewelry that is serious, critical and theoretical, and this literature is growing all the time. But it's also true that, as a field, **contemporary jewelry lacks sufficient serious, critical and theoretical analysis of itself.** Too often, fundamental concepts and values are not thought through, and the forces that affect the meanings of contemporary jewelry are not identified. At the heart of Part 1, then, is an attempt to show that contemporary jewelry is not a stable category, but rather a term that stands for a multitude of different objects and ways of thinking about objects. In Part 1, the five authors involved in this part of the book argue that what contemporary jewelry appears to be will be significantly shaped by the different spaces-page, bench, plinth, drawer, street, body, world-in which it's encountered. As you'll see, these aren't "real" or literal spaces. They are discourses, a term that refers to a kind of larger category created from values, ideas, conversations, texts, images, institutions, events and ways of behaving. All of these things combine to create a discourse. There's a discourse about contemporary jewelry that this book, and Part 1, is keen to both challenge and extend. The **page**, made up of digital and printed pages, is a space governed by the values of art history, notably originality and innovation, and it's deeply concerned with legitimacy and authority. The **bench**, a piece of furniture used in the production of jewelry, is also a changing and evolving discourse about the makers of contemporary jewelry and their activities, as well as a key site in which values like authenticity and mastery are confirmed (and challenged). The display device of the **plinth** brings contemporary jewelry into contact with the histories and ideologies of the museum as well as contemporary strategies of display The drawer, in turn, is a discourse that concerns classification, collecting and preservation, as contemporary jewelry is shaped by all the different drawers (private and public) in which it is stored. The **street**, related to the world, represents questions about use and the process of creating meaning, as contemporary jewelry circulates beyond the jeweler's studio, the·"white cube" of the gallery and museum, or the private spaces of the collector's drawers. The **body** is, like the bench, one of the privileged spaces that shapes contemporary jewelry's meanings, as the jewelry object encounters both a fleshy home and a complex set of social and cultural ideas. Finally, the **world**, signifying spaces beyond those usually taken into account by the contemporary jewelry field, brings into play questions about politics and ethics. Together, these spaces—or discourses—provide a way to identify the conditions of possibility within which contemporary jewelry can exist. The order of these spaces isn't supposed to suggest a hierarchy, with some spaces being "better" or "worse" than others-and certainly not the idea of a life cycle, a series of stages that contemporary jewelry passes through. The page comes first because the five of us responsible for Part l have written a text that goes inside a book. Because our text is published on a printed page, it's subject to all the ideas and values that make up the discourse of the page, and it made sense to acknowledge up front which conditions of possibility are shaping this particular representation of contemporary jewelry. But what follows is not a linear progression, from the bench to the plinth to the body to the street, but different—and sometimes simultaneous—frameworks through which contemporary jewelry objects and practices are made visible and meaningful.