Friedrich Becker

As maker of kinetic jewelry as well as large objects and a professor at Düsseldorf’s Arts and Crafts School, which later became the University of Applied Sciences, Friedrich Becker set new standards for individually and artistically designed jewelry. Equally importance was his influence on the development of design in the Modernist tradition for serially manufactured jewelry which changed the jewelry culture in workshops and ateliers from the 1970s onwards, particularly in German-speaking countries. Since the 1950s, his clear-cut, constructivist language of form and design, the use of invisible settings for interchangeable gemstones and the implementation of kinetic ideas in jewelry, garnered international attention. Until his death 1997, he fought for the recognition of his trade as an artistic discipline without, however, denying its limits and traditions.