Svenja John
Jewelry Auteur
by m a rjor i e si mon

Lapido (bracelet), 2001
polycarbonate
width 4 3 ⁄8"
p h o t o: s i l k e m a y e r

24metalsmith | vol .31 | no.3

Breath (brooch), 2001
polycarbonate
diameter 3 1 ⁄ 2"
p h o t o: s i l k e m a y e r

vol.31 | no.3 | metalsmith

25

of j e w e l r y m a k i ng , German artist Svenja John muses,“I think you must be an auteur.” Coined by French film
director Jacques Truffaut, the term describes directors
whose command of the medium, technical competence,
personal style, and “authorship” of their work is unmistakable.
John believes jewelers must do no less: they must “own” theirwork, it should be well made, and like that of no one else. If
this is true, John is the Werner Herzog of polycarbonate, theplastic from which all of her jewelry is made.
Plastic can no longer be considered an alternative
material in jewelry. “Auteur jewelry” is already being madefrom many different kinds of prime and recycled materials.
Assembled like some ethereal yet indestructible twentyfirst-century origami architecture, John’s kaleidoscopic
brooches and bracelets are sliced and slotted from flat sheet
into three dimensions, resulting in a fractured repetition ofelemental colored forms. As if seen through a microscope,
the pieces recall scientific models of crystalline, organic
structures such as diatoms, or tumbling pollen grains
realized in international colors: Dutch orange, Caribbean
blue, Mexican yellow. Maros, a bracelet from 2002, resembles
nothing so much as a blastula, the early embryonic stage
in animal development. Transparent, it contains a secretcollection of colored nuclei.
The potency of John’s jewelry stems from her skill
in balancing form and color. She uses color visually andemotionally, deftly pairing and contrasting complementaryhues and playing with translucency and opacity. Asked
about her “heroes” or influences, she names American
painters Frank Stella and Peter Halley, artists who use
light and color in geometric arrangement, though in truth
her understanding of color puts her in league with the
Impressionists too. As a colorist, Halley does seem to be akindred spirit. John’s translucent jewelry is reminiscentof Halley’s palette of near-fluorescent, urban pink, aqua,orange, and acid green. And like Halley, her themes have to
do with repetition and change, expressed through color.
John works exclusively in Makrolon brand polycarbonate,

Bugi (bracelet), 1996
polycarbonate
width 2 3 ⁄4"p h o t o: j ö r g fa h l e n k a m p

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metalsmith | vol .31 | no.3

The potency of John’s
jewelry stems fromher skill in balancing
form and color.

a thermoplastic polymer
manufactured by Bayer
AG and known in the
United States as Lexan.
It is lightweight, stable,
strong, flexible, andalmost infinitely recyclable. Easily worked, molded, andthermoformed, it is highly impact resistant, and able
to tolerate a wide temperature range.1 Due to its highrefractive index, it retains a luminous translucency, evenwhen abraded. Like metal, Lexan can be bent on a brake atroom temperature or in a tight radius while cold. It absorbs
paint and the surface can be sanded to a frosty finish andotherwise treated much like metal. Among its many uses are
numerous medical applications, eyeglass lenses, riot shields,
CDs and CD cases, toys, bulletproof windows, automobile
headlights, and greenhouse enclosures.
Born in 1963, the year of President Kennedy’s triumphal
visit to Berlin, John grew up in Duisberg, an ancient town
in the great steel-producing Ruhr region of West Germany.
She came of age during a divided Germany and now lives
in Berlin, an international city with its own haunted
past. After studying archaeology at Ruhr University for 2
two years, her true interest prevailed and she went tostudy goldsmithing at the Goldsmith’s School (Staatliche
Zeichanakadamie Hanau) in Hanau, an industrial town thathas been a leading center of jewelry manufacturing since
the sixteenth century.
German education for jewelers is a long and thoroughprocess. Higher education is followed by technical training,which is itself followed by a “Master’s Diploma.” Students
must have “praxis,” a practicum with a working artist; asmany as ten years might elapse between entering university
and emerging into the field as a working jeweler. It goes
without saying that by the time these young jewelers enter
the world arena, they are skilled and confident practitioners.
John received her first degree in Hanau in 1989. A few
months later came the first of two global events to affect thecourse of her career: the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The full impact of German reunification may not beclear to outsiders, especially to Americans.3 The partitionand occupation that followed World War II affected the arts,
as well as every other part of German culture. In contrast
to the dominance of social realism in the East, “in West
Germany the pluralistic movements of the postwar Modernswere influential,” says art historian Dr. Renate Luckner
Bien.4 Yet both East and West shared the values of “usability,
artisanal perfection, simplicity, [and] appropriate materials”
in the decorative arts.5 In the end, the postwar period led
to very different kinds of jewelry. Until 1989 East German
artists worked in virtual isolation. Because materials were
scarce, they were accustomed to improvising, and theirwork had a raw and primeval beauty.6 As a student in West
Germany in the 1980s, John was certainly aware of thedifferences between East and West German artists. Thenafter 1989, everything changed. A unified Berlin meant not

only a larger community of jewelry artists, but also accessto inexpensive and available East Berlin real estate. The city
was on its way to becoming the vibrant and creative center
that it is today.
In 1991 John returned to school in Hanau for her
Master’s Diploma, and it was during this time that a
professor introduced her to polycarbonate. Then, with her
newly minted degree and several years’ experience behindher (between degrees she supported herself and learned thevalue of benchwork by designing for industry in platinum),
she headed for Berlin. She joined a group of seven young
companies who shared an old factory floor in an affordable
neighborhood near the former Wall. Among them was anadvertising studio whose proactive approach to marketing
helped her get the word out about her exciting and original
plastic jewelry. She began to attract a new client baseoutside traditional goldsmithing circles. In the studio she
fabricated her new jewelry from sheets of polycarbonate
film, cutting out the multiple parts by hand with nail scissors.
She was aware of waterjet cutting, a cold cutting processcontrolled by computer, but it was not until 1996 and 1997
that she began to have components cut with this technique.
In the spring of 1996, a pregnant friend invited John
to take over her booth at the prestigious Ambiente
Frankfurt trade fair, and for the first time John presented
her polycarbonate jewelry to an international audience.
She showed only two bracelet designs. Taking advantageof the material’s lack of preciousness, she jettisoned thevitrine, and the kinetic, colorful polygons, displayed openly
on tables, communicated an unexpected intimacy withbuyers. Her fresh designs, in riotous color, supported byher goldsmith’s craftsmanship, created quite a buzz. Bugi
(1996), a free-form bracelet reminiscent of a Judy Pfaff
sculpture with its wildly patterned polychrome elements,
anticipated the more integrated designs to come. It would
not be an overstatement to say that this exhibition andthe ensuing connections she made catapulted John onto
the international design map, and she immediatelybegan accumulating awards and prizes. For one thing,
the manufacturers of Makrolon supported her because ofher innovative use of their material. In 1999, she won theLandespreis Berlin, an international design prize, thentwice received the Bayerischer Staatspreis, Munich, and thecoveted Herbert Hofmann Prize in Munich in 2004.
In 1997, John’s Bracelet No. 1, a combination of whitepainted plastic and stainless steel parts, was shown in
an issue of Design Report, a design magazine printed inGermany but published worldwide. The same year, John’s
jewelry was then shown at the opening exhibition of
the Material ConneXion headquarters, a global materials
consultancy in New York,7 which led to an invitation toPremiere Classe, a Paris Fashion Week accessory trade fairconsidered to be indispensable for fashion designers.8 Aftera few years at Premiere Classe, John met haute couture
designer Christian Lacroix, who asked her to design jewelry
for his 1999–2000 and 2000–01 collections. Those years

Maros (bracelet), 2002
polycarbonate
width 3 1 ⁄8"
p h o t o: s i l k e m a y e r

Palido (bracelet), 2001
polycarbonate
width 3 1 ⁄8"
p h o t o: s i l k e m a y e r

Palido (detail), 2001
p h o t o: s i l k e m a y e r

vol.31 | no.3 | metalsmith

27

Rudny (bracelet), 2007
polycarbonate
width 3 1 ⁄ 2"

p h o t o: t i va d a r n e m e s i

28metalsmith | vol .31 | no.3

Orel (brooch), 2007
polycarbonate
4 x 4 1 ⁄4 x 3 ⁄4"p h o t o: t i va d a r n e m e s ivol.31 | no.3 | metalsmith

29Lipka (brooch), 2010polycarbonate
diameter 4 3 ⁄8"

X001 (necklace), 2004
polycarbonate
length 22 3 ⁄4"were a youthful hive of hyperkinetic activity, deadlines, andParisian excitement.
Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, and thecollapse of the international luxury market. John says,“All the foreign customers who normally visited the fashionshows in Europe, especially Paris, canceled their flights.”
The two years it took to recover was too long for manysmall independent designers to wait. Fortunately, John had
begun to show her work in art jewelry galleries, the firstbeing Gallery Biro in Munich, the only gallery specializing
in all plastic jewelry. Since then she has had more than
25 solo exhibitions in Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan,
Holland, and the United States, and her work is in museum
collections in nearly all of those places. Her jewelry has
been shown at Schmuck in Munich on numerous occasions
and was first presented to American audiences at sofa/ny
by Jewelerswerk Galerie as early as 2002. In 2009 she wasinvited to spend two months in residence in Australia, andin 2010 she became an artist in residence at University of
the Arts in Philadelphia.
Another “hero” is the indefatigable Dutch designer
and auteur jeweler Gijs Bakker. John admires Bakker
for at once designing multiples, one-offs, and objects
for use, while commanding significant prices for his
work. Like Bakker John controls all aspects of her work,from installations to catalogue presentations. Under
her direction, for example, the models in the photos
make eye contact with the camera, reinforcing jewelry’s
fundamental human connection. Work represented in her
first catalogue published in 2003, called simply Svenja John,floats ethereally on the page, allowing light to illuminate
the layers and interior structures. Because the images arelarger than life, the pieces’ miraculous construction isvisible, allowing viewers to see how a component might beconfigured to create an entirely new form with an entirely
different emotional valence.
Although John produces her bracelets in series, each one
is unique, with designs reconfigured with new colors every
six months. She also adjusts the size of her bracelets every
two years because arm diameter is increasing. Most titlesof works are chosen almost at random from an atlas, tiny
villages that have meaning only to her. To English speakers
they read like the faintly quizzical names of ikea furniture.
All of John’s jewelry is produced in editions, though
the coloring of each piece is unique. The evolution of her“Breath” series of brooches (2001) shows this process. Breath
01, a dense, transparent cluster of petals, seems a whisperof thistle in a field of summer sunlight. As if later in theday, in the blue of late afternoon, Breath 02 takes on a coolerp h o t o: t i va d a r n e m e s i30metalsmith | vol .31 | no.3

p h o t o: s i l k e m a y e r

Sketch for Kabakebrooch, 2007

Kabake (brooch), 2007
polycarbonate
4 1 ⁄ 4 x 2 1 ⁄ 2 x 1 3 ⁄ 8"

p h o t o: t i va d a r n e m e s ivol.31 | no.3 | metalsmith

31

Svenja John composing
Nowa Nowa (sculpture),
2009
polycarbonate
diameter 5' 3"
p h o t o: m a r c u s f o l e y

Svenja John’s workbenchwith studio rags andpaint, where?, 2010
p h o t o: m a r j o r i e s i m o n

32metalsmith | vol .31 | no.3

palette in lavender. The trifolate heart shape emphasizes its
triangular stability. In Breath 03 another change of palettedominated by an even cooler green makes it appear evenmore solid. A muted undertone of complementary orange,
seen behind a translucent structural layer, enlivens whatmight otherwise be monochrome. Re-imagined once again
in red, the simply-titled Breath becomes a solid-looking
scarlet hydrangea.
John’s work from the early 2000s is densely threedimensional. Palido, one of a bracelet series, is an icy,
futuristic cousin to Barbara Seidenath’s contemporaneous
enamel brooches, in its chilly transparency and suggested
glacial strata, cracks rimmed with the glow of the longrays of the rising or setting sun. Shown in the catalogue
shot from overhead, it seems to be Maros turned inside out,
revealing its cellular structure. “Palido” translates from
Spanish or Portuguese as pale, colorless, or white, any one ofwhich applies to its implied fragility. Another in the series,
with the title Lapido (an anagram of Palido) suggests stones
used by more conventional traditional jewelers.
Reconfigured components continue to tumble fromJohn’s workbench. Rudny (2007), possibly named for a
Russian village, is a taut spiky spidery circlet, reminiscent ofa sleeping bat; unfolding and dominated by opaque primarycolors, it seems the opposite of the ethereal Maros. The
bleached bones of Orel (2007), (an area in Russia) emphasize
the connections rather than the form. Many pieces
from this time use an X and O combination that offers amaximum flexibility in both linear and volumetric design.
Barbell-shaped connectors have elongated to femur-likesolidity and the whole configuration emphasizes theangularity of line and connections. The recent Lipka (2010)(referring to a group of Lithuanian Tatars) is airier, lighter,
stripped of its contents, an opaque desert star in sand andyellow or a glance back to the ’70s.
“Series X001,” from 2004, marks the beginning of John’s
newest work, with interlocking X structure, in which theconnecting elements actually become the structure. The
new handbags and “X001” series of necklaces are cut fromheavier stock than the foil used in earlier work. In general,
the work has become more linear, cleaner, lighter in feel,and more accessible. With the handbags, John has become,like Bakker, more of a product designer. As varied as thebrooches have been, the necklaces appear to offer virtually
endless variations of point and line linkages. According toGerman curator and journalist Gabi Dewald, in this work“light plays an entirely new role....it now flashes in pointsof brilliance on the corners and edges of the jewelry which
twists and turns as the wearer moves.”9 It’s the perfect
travel jewelry in an age of metal detectors: lightweight,
boldly ornamental, yet with little intrinsic value.
Ultimately, what elevates John’s plastic jewelry above asea of recycled handicrafts is that she speaks the languageof classical goldsmithing. The basic building blocks of herunit constructions allow her to create a dizzying variety ofconfigurations. The individual linkages look simple, but likethe lock-and-key assembly of proteins, they form strong,stable, flexible bonds that can be applied to assembly on any
scale. In 2009 she had the opportunity to prove it. Following
an exhibition at Gallery Funaki in Melbourne, Australia, shetraveled to Nungurner, Victoria, to the shared studio of Dore
Stockhausen, a friend from goldsmith school, and Marcus
Foley,10 where she completed a sculpture commission fora private client. She created the fully three-dimensional
orb, more than five feet in diameter, as a gargantuan
version of a classic brooch—dense, ingenious, lightweight
and light-diffusing—transported it by train to Melbourne,
and assembled it onsite. After years of manipulating her
modular elements, John knows exactly how pieces will fit
together and she can easily visualize their assembly. John
frequently envisions her works while she is on vacation, atthe seashore in France, relaxed and away from her studio.
Working from models cut from travel postcards, she createsthe components of the next series. Kabake (2007) looks likean x-ray of a louse, and probably makes sense only to John
herself. Filled in with color, it gains more of its eventual
personality. Such sketches become computer-generated
drawings of elements that will then be cut by waterjet.
After receiving all of the components, John begins thetask of detailing each piece. They may be hand-sanded
before painting. Up to three coats of specially selected
paint are applied and manipulated with squares ofcarefully chosen 100 percent cotton cloth. The soft cotton,
like an old diaper, absorbs exactly the right amount ofpaint, leaving behind exactly the right amount of color.
Edges and planes are each treated differentially. By using

Ultimately, whatelevates John’s plastic
jewelry above a sea ofrecycled handicrafts
is that she speaks thelanguage of classicalgoldsmithing.

sheets of Makrolon up to
four times thicker than
the film she started with,John now has visible edges
to hold a volume of paint,
giving her more color
possibilities. This newgroup of brooches contains
elements more openly
suggestive of space travel, rockets aimed toward eachother. Saturated complementary colors, cool aqua on top
with hot orange visible beneath, form a skeletal but sturdy
scaffolding with no sight of the ground below.
Svenja John is emblematic of the many contradictions
that characterize modern life. Americans and Westerners
valorize the new while searching for roots. Born to a
country riven by war in ways most Americans cannot evenimagine, John has wedded her ebullient enthusiasm to a
German sense of order in the service of jewelry, giving
expression to that which remains constant—geometry
and nature—in a completely manmade material. She
has, perhaps without intention, successfully addressed aconundrum of the decade: she appears to have anticipatedthe coming economic downturn and stratospheric cost of
precious metals by continuing to produce original wearable
art in an industrial material. She believes her choice ofmaterial is modern, but the way she uses it and the way sheputs it together show an age-old respect for craftsmanshipand order. As John says, “I am German, after all.”
Marjorie Simon is a Philadelphia-based jeweler and writer.

1. See video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsls5ZPCUnE
2.	It is worth noting, however, that John grew up in a society in whichmaking jewelry mattered. The Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin,
the new Museum of Technology, devotes an entire exhibit hall to
Jewelry Manufacture, equating it with Air and Space, Navigation,
Rail, Photography, and other important technologies. All the tools,
machines and processes are illustrated in a life-size walk-throughshop, which also contains a working “goldsmith’s workbench.”
3.	The gulf between American educational orientation and themore conceptual approach of Europeans in general, as well as theattention given to visiting West Germans such as Klaus Bury andHermann Junger in particular in the 1970s and 80s, tended to
obscure the very different situations in the East and West.
4.	Renata Luckner-Bien in Collection Feldversuch- Klasse Dorothea
Pruhl (Nijmegen, Netherlands: The Marzee Collection, 2004), p. 44.
5.	Ibid., p. 43.
6.	To compare typical jewelry from East and West Germany see thefollowing books: Klasse Dorothea Pruhl, op. cit., and MunchnerGoldschmiede, Schmuck und Gerat 1993, Munchner Stadtmuseum,
Munich, Germany.
7. www.materialconnexion.com
8. www.premiere-classe.com
9.	Gabi Dewald, on Velvet da Vinci website www.velvetdavinci.com/
show.php?sid=124.
10. See Nowa Nowa sculpture
Furthermore:
www.svenja-john.dewww.jewelerswerk.com
www.galleryfunaki.com.au

vol.31 | no.3 | metalsmith33