Studio Visits
Studio Visits
Freedom to Create
The freedom of art has long been a topic of discussion. Nowadays, it is also at home in the applied arts. Read more about this in the winter edition of Art Aurea.
In the very first issue of Art Aurea, which was published in autumn 1985, Jürgen Claus wrote in a guest commentary about a “sensational expansion… Read on
Studio Visits
Existential Questions
Every art, every serious design, corresponds to an existential need. The Summer 2025 issue of Art Aurea presents prime examples.
Jewelry designers from all over the world, along with their gallery owners, collectors and fans, gather in Munich every year in mid-March. Well over 100… Read on
Studio Visits
Spirituality
What would arts and crafts be without the spiritual? More on this topic in the new Art Aurea, issue 58, winter 2024.
Spirituality is not only a characteristic of religions, but also of serious art, creative craftsmanship and discriminating design. A recent example is the new Windows for… Read on
Trade fairs
A Sense of Community
Many things succeed alone, but some can only be achieved together. Examples in the new Art Aurea, issue 57, Autumn 2024.
When people want to achieve something great, they are usually well advised to collaborate with likeminded teammates. This applies equally to political goals, environmental issues… Read on
Trade fairs
In Competition
Is it a need or a compulsion to dominate? News about competition(s) in arts and crafts in Art Aurea, issue 56, Summer 2024.
In ancient Greece, competition in art and sport, known as agon, was a fundamental principle of culture. Legendary artist duels have been known since the… Read on
Trade fairs
Arts, Crafts, Life
Art and craftsmanship as the elixir of life! Can this also apply to entire locations? An example in the winter 2023 issue of Art Aurea.
There is no doubt that art and crafts are essential elements of a fulfilled individual life. The fact that they can also inspire and shape… Read on
Studio Visits
Life Work
Fortunate indeed are those who labor on their life’s work or can already look upon it with pride. The autumn 2023 issue of Art Aurea presents several grandiose examples.
An artist’s life work is often synonymous with their entire oeuvre. It includes all the works produced in the course of a lifetime, whether they… Read on
Studio Visits
Plastic
The magic of a material that became a problem is one of the themes in Art Aurea’s summer edition (no. 52).
Much of what the modern world has brought us is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. This also applies to plastics. Major developments in science,… Read on
Trade fairs
Fertile Ground for Art
How does interest or even love for art develop? The autumn 2022 edition of Art Aurea shows that craft can be a favorable breeding ground.
Some people are totally indifferent to art. For others, art means a lot, or even everything, in one form or another. The similarities and differences… Read on
Studio Visits
Time Travels
Art Aurea’s summer edition 2-2022 is not about science fiction, but it is about expanding consciousness.
What are the roles of art and craft? In the summer 2022 print edition, we take a look at an aspect that typically preoccupies science-fiction… Read on
Trade fairs
Jewelry Design 2022
Before Corona, numerous designers exhibited at Inhorgenta Munich. The change in jewelry culture began long before.
Until the 1980s, Germany’s jewelry industry was very nearly the world’s largest, second only to Italy as the global leader. Nowadays most jewelry is made… Read on
Studio Visits
About Borders
The new Art Aurea 1-2022 is also about the unity of art, craft and life.
Before the year’s first issue of Art Aurea (Spring 2022) went to press, we too could not have imagined that Putin would invade all of… Read on
Studio Visits
Rays of Hope
Anyone who looks at our world today and into its future needs rays of hope. Art Aurea’s winter edition 4-2021 presents some beautiful examples.
In a catalogue text for documenta 7 in 1982, the painter Gerhard Richter wrote that “art is the highest form of hope.” This was the… Read on
Studio Visits
Life is Art
Live “normally” again! That’s what many people want now. Or better to create life as a work of art? More in Art Aurea 2-2021.
You can already guess who called for lives to be lived as works of art. It was Joseph Beuys, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated… Read on
Studio Visits
Leben ist Kunst
Wieder „normal“ leben! Das wünschen sich jetzt viele. Besser vielleicht, das Leben als Kunstwerk zu sehen? Mehr dazu in Art Aurea 2-2021.
Sie ahnen schon, wer ein Leben als Kunstwerk gefordert hat. Es war Joseph Beuys, dessen 100-jähriges Geburtsjubiläum in diesem Jahr in zahlreichen Ausstellungen gefeiert wird.… Read on
Studio Visits
Uli Biskup: One year with Corona
How has the coronavirus affected the applied arts so far? Art Aurea asked jewelry designer Uli Biskup from Neuss.
Art Aurea What has the past year of coronavirus meant for you personally and economically? Ursula Biskup First of all, I am happy to have… Read on
Studio Visits
2021 will be better
Questions to artists, designers and gallery owners about the Corona Year. At the start, the jewelry artist Nikolay Sardamov from Sofia, Bulgaria.
Like no other event since World War II, the Corona Pandemic 2020 has influenced politics, economy, society and culture. Despite all the hardship and distortions,… Read on
Studio Visits
Material Awareness
Creative craftsmanship, art and author design against corona tristesse. To the new Art Aurea – Issue 42, Winter 2020.
All crafts have in common a profound understanding of materials – or even a consciousness of the materials per se. True masters breathe life into… Read on
Studio Visits
Barbara Nanning – Eternal Movement
The Kunstmuseum Den Haag recently honored her work with a retrospective. We spoke with Barbara Nanning.
Born in The Hague in 1957, Barbara Nanning studied ceramics at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam four decades ago. Since then she has developed… Read on
Studio Visits
Geist und Materie
Zur neuen Printausgabe von Art Aurea.
Die erste Ausgabe des Jahres 2020 befasst sich in verschiedenen Beiträgen mit einem neuen Selbstverständnis innerhalb der Angewandten Kunst, das aus der gegenwärtigen Menschheitskrise erwachsen… Read on
Studio Visits
Niessing’s Design Studio now in Düsseldorf
Niessing on the way to an international brand.
Niessing’s design studio has a new home. Niessing’s CEO Sandro Erl explains that the studio with Nina Friesleben-Laue and Verena Darlath now occupies a new… Read on
Studio Visits
Free Thinkers – Christoph R. Siebrasse and Rainer Schenk
Together with the painter Rainer Schenk, Christoph R. Siebrasse has developed spectacular furniture objects since the 1970s.
The furniture and lamps of “Neues deutsches Design” [New German Design] had been a counter concept to “Die Gute Form” [The Good Form] à la… Read on
Studio Visits
At Home In Two Worlds
Ritsue Mishima ranks among the most innovative contemporary glass artists. At the same this maker born in 1962 in Kyoto, Japan, is a lateral entrant. Meanwhile, her large sculptural glass objects reach five-digit prices.
Art Aurea: You’ve been creating glass objects for twenty years now. Prior to that, you worked as a stylist, and created art installations with flowers.… Read on
Studio Visits
How a Tension Ring is Created
Only a few jewelry creations have what it takes to become imperishable design classics. One of them is the Niessing Tension Ring®. But how exactly is this ring, this epitome of modern jewelry design, produced?
In 1908, Georg Simmel published his Psychologie des Schmuckes (Psychology of Jewelry). The way this great philosopher from Berlin described the egoistic and at the… Read on
Studio Visits
Emil Heger – Silent Magnitude
How can the artistic crafts, which are not always unjustly dismissed as too tame, contrive to shed this image? The experimental shapes created by this ceramicist from Höhr-Grenzhausen provide an answer.
In the pottery world, the concept of simplicity is all too readily associated with functionality: the simplest form makes for optimum utility. Emil Heger’s creations,… Read on
Studio Visits
Mechthild Lobisch – Master of the Art of Bookbinding
Painting, sculpture, illustration or graphics? A bookbinder on her interdisciplinary craft
Of all the applied arts, the art of the bookbinder is probably the one with the most contradictions. While it always starts out from a… Read on
Studio Visits
Windmills and Oak Leaves
Solingen is internationally renowned for its quality knives. Though many manufacturers have disappeared, a few exceptions remain.
Knives in every imaginable shape and size are displayed atop the long table in the exhibition room and on the shelves that line its walls.… Read on
Studio Visits
Niessing – Loving What One Does
Since 1982 the manufacturer has been the world market leader in jewelry design. An Interview
In 1979 Niessing developed its Tension Ring and the “Niessing S” jewelry line in 1982. The company is currently in a phase of generational change.… Read on
Studio Visits
Christof Lungwitz – Walking a Fine Line
The designer skillfully masters the balancing act between fine and applied art, self-effacing and almost shy.
Christof Lungwitz and his wife, a physiotherapist, live in the picturesque town of Leichlingen near Düsseldorf, in a house perched on a hillside and fitted… Read on
Studio Visits
Bernard Heesen – An Element of the Anarchic
The Dutch glass artist draws inspiration from antique encyclopedia illustrations and flea market finds. Interview Reinhold Ludwig, Photos Peter Cox.
Since the time of the De Stijl and the Bauhaus movements many artists and designers from the Netherlands cultivate reduced shapes. Bernard Heesen’s work obviously… Read on
Studio Visits
Tanja Friedrichs – The Sky is Clouding Over
Tanja Friedrichs uses gallery wire to create jewelry that radiates a compellingly vibrant elegance and reflects the light in a dancing motion
Gallery wire was originally used in the early days of industrial manufacturing as an ornamental material to embellish silverware, but is produced only rarely nowadays.… Read on
Studio Visits
An Interview with Morten Løbner Espersen
The Seven Deadly Sins. Ceramic Art of the danish artist Morten Løbner Espersen.
Art Aurea What was it that sparked your interest in ceramics in the first place? Morten Løbner Espersen I always liked to draw and paint… Read on
Studio Visits
Brooches Against Animal Abuse
The jewelry designer Gitta Pielcke tells us in an interview about the jewelry she creates to take a stand against caged hens
Our society has long since realized the importance of keeping hens in humane conditions. As a result, even average earners often buy free-range or organic… Read on
Studio Visits
Gigi Mariani in his World
In the video: A visit in the studio of Gigi Mariani, an Italian jewelry artist
At first it was just a passion for him: Gigi Mariani started his career as goldsmith without a lot of fuss. Since 27 years he has been making special jewelry in his hometown Modena – by… Read on
Studio Visits
Motion with Lasting Effect
Jewelry Artist Friedrich Becker
He united an engineer’s desire to design things with the arts of the goldsmith and the sculptor. With his artistic oeuvre and the impact he… Read on
Studio Visits
Visiting Carl Dau
A Video
The reduction to the basic determines the life and work of the jewelry designer Carl Dau. A former sailor, he knew how to limit himself to the… Read on
Studio Visits
Svenja John
A Perfect Symbiosis
Svenja John has been working with plastic sheeting since 1994, imaginatively joining and interlacing small pieces painted in multifarious colors, to form highly original, semiotically multilayered jewelry. Read on
Studio Visits
A Thousand Fingers
Jordi Marcet and Rosa Vila-Abadal
Check out this interesting video by Ignasi Llobet and Eva Rodríguez. Read on
Studio Visits
Perfect ceramics
Pottery from Icheon
Watch five masters at work. Read on
Studio Visits
Giovanni Corvaja
Universal Beauty
The goldsmith Giovanni Corvaja once said that making jewelry is really only a pretext, a kind of apology that lets him stay constantly in contact with gold, an element that he describes as magical, a miracle of nature. Read on
Studio Visits
Andrea Röthlin
Painting with Gold
What happens when gold leaf is used to cover the bottom of an oil tank? The Swiss painter Andrea Röthlin tried to find out. Read on
Studio Visits
Thomas Feichtner
The Smaller Yardstick
When the young product designer traveled to China, he saw the dark sides of modern industrial design. Since then, he has worked only for small, local manufactories and jewelers. Read on
Studio Visits
Norman Vilalta
A Shoemaker in Barcelona
Traditional shoemakers, who can handcraft completely welted shoes, have become a rare species. One of them is Norman Vilalta, who is originally from Argentina — and brimming with ideas. Read on
Studio Visits
Ulla and Martin Kaufmann
Simultaneously Simple and Opulent
They named their minimalistic jewelry Just Sheet Metal, Mirrored or Nearly Nothing. Now simplicity and opulence combine in the Kaufmanns’ latest creations. Read on
Studio Visits
Georg Spreng
"I’m a Colorful Sort of Guy"
Georg Spreng crafted his first piece of gold jewelry in 1983. Previously, this trained product designer from Schwäbisch Gmünd had designed things like computers or dentist’s chairs for eleven years. Read on