In conversation with Susan Cummins, board member of Art Jewelry Forum

Text: Paulina Tsvetanova

Susan Cummins

Susan, thanks for giving us this interview. Can you quickly introduce yourself and your role with the Art Jewelry Forum?

Yes, thanks for asking me. By way of introduction I will tell you a story. While visiting a church in Florence in the 1960s, I became aware that I was totally captured by the fresco in front of me. I had always loved to draw but this experience revealed that I also loved to see – and in fact I loved looking more than making. So after I made my way back to America I studied art history, then opened an art gallery, and in the process eventually found my way to the craft world and art jewelry.

In the 1990s American collectors of craft were forming collecting groups that were dedicated to specific materials. There was a ceramics group, a glass group, a fiber group, but no jewelry group. I felt that jewelry needed a group too. So, with a number of other collectors and artists, we started the Art Jewelry Forum. Our intention was to educate the collector base to enable them to support the ever-more challenging jewelry coming out of the academic institutions here in America. We mainly did this through trips and interaction with jewelers, curators and gallerists.

With the advent of the computer and the global economy, we expanded the organization to include artists, curators, galleries and everyone who was interested in contemporary jewelry, wherever they lived. We started an active blog and then an online magazine to review exhibitions and books, express ideas and theories, and to interview active members of the community. With this increase in activity we hoped to form an archive about jewelry that everyone who might want to know more could access. We were doing our homework and making it available to others who wanted to research the field.

You are a collector of contemporary art jewelry. How and when did you fall in love with this field? Is there a personal story behind it?

Well, first I was a dealer, and only after I closed my gallery in 2002 did I become a collector. In the gallery I exhibited paintings, sculptures and jewelry. I loved all of it, but the jewelers in particular impressed me with their intelligence and skill. So despite the fact that I don’t wear jewelry, I began expanding my knowledge of it. In the gallery I had only shown American jewelers and had no knowledge of European jewelry. To remedy this, I arranged a trip to the two European capitals of jewelry (Amsterdam and Munich) with some other collectors and two artists who were familiar with those cities. It was a fantastic and very eye-opening trip, and my origin moment as a collector. That was the beginning of my serious intention to own these small and vital objects.

Pieces in Susan Cummins’ art jewelry collection

Many people have no idea what art jewelry in fact is. Jewelry is not only an adornment. How would you define it?

I recently read a description of art jewelry that I like very much, and this has become my current definition. In the book Ten Years of Precious Thoughts, Adrean Bloomard writes “Jewelry is one of the most ancient, psychologically complex communicative forms I know. One small object encapsulates millennia of cultural layers, ancestral beliefs and relational visions that are so complex and personal that it becomes a feared, venerated or even hated object.” Art jewelry is this kind of jewelry done with consciousness.

I personally collect vintage fashion, but I do not always wear it. Do you wear the jewelry you own? Do you regard jewelry as wearable art? Wearing art is an intimate relationship with you as a person…

No, I do not wear jewelry, but I am very interested in the restrictions implied by its life as a wearable object, and I consider this to be important to its meaning and value. There are many ways to look at jewelry, and its intimate relationship to the body is one aspect to ponder. The idea that it can also carry the memory markings from one wearer to another is also very interesting. For example, a ring changes form as it is worn, and when it is passed on to another person it carries the marks made by the earlier body.

In an Art Jewelry Forum interview, jeweler Monika Brugger commented that “Making brooches is not only about making beautiful compositions with different materials and forms, but it is also the fact that you make an object that is related to the human body. This will affect how the wearer is perceived by the viewer and by society. When I use a garment and when I sew the elements directly on the textile, I speak, among other things about the memory of a sorrowful period of my ‘national background.’ I also refer to jewels as a mark on the body, and to all the ways societies invent reasons to include or exclude a part of the human race by force or voluntarily. This is human damage.” She has some very deep thoughts about the relationship of jewelry to the body in this interview.

Many jewelers have had to think about this subject for themselves, and I love trying to decode how they’ve each done it.

Pieces in Susan Cummins’ art jewelry collection

Can art jewelry have a political or cultural message?

Yes. In fact I am currently involved in a project investigating this idea. In the 1970s and 1980s American jewelers were very active in making jewelry that included political commentary. From Fred Woell, who often ridiculed the role of corporate America, to Ken Cory and Kiff Slemmons, who commented on Native American Indian jewelry and the political plight of indigenous peoples living on reservations, there were many artists who protested against American politics and society. Political badges have also been prominent in the culture at large. The San Francisco gallery Velvet da Vinci had a show of artist-made badges a couple of years ago. Jewelry is very communicative in this way.

Susan, you are very proactive person, going to international shows, fairs, travelling a lot. Do some curators or experts help you to choose a piece, or do you rely only on your intuition when you decide to buy a piece?

I do have an art historian called Damian Skinner helping me to document and write about the pieces in my collection. I have found it great fun to work with him on this task, and it has clarified what I am interested in, and why. But the choice of jewelry is still very much mine – with advice from Rose Roven, my partner.

I also have collected art for a long time, and at one point Rose and I tried to use an art advisor to buy artwork for our house. Although we did end up with some great pieces, we also had a terrible time trying to make him understand what it was we wanted to see. Somehow the idea that we were interested in material-based art didn’t compute in his conceptually based art world. So we ended that relationship. Despite the fact that the art world has many consultants ready willing and able to help you find what you want, the craft world – and in particular the jewelry world –can’t claim the same. Why is that, I wonder? Don’t we take it seriously enough?

Pieces in Susan Cummins’ art jewelry collection

Which positions are present in your art jewelry collection? Can you talk about some significant pieces? Do you support also emerging artists?

The Rotasa Collection Trust (the legal name of our collection) is looking for contemporary jewelry that expresses the poetry and emotion of the primal human condition. With each piece we try to get to the basis of what makes jewelry so powerful to humans from a deep psychological place. There are a number of things that jewelry is known to do: adorn the body, declare status, and act as a talisman. That last one is really the driving force of our collecting. We try as much as possible to understand the mysteries of our existence through the feelings we attach to these small, but powerful objects.

Some of the significant artists I collect are Dorothea Prühl, Manfred Bischoff, Bernhard Schobinger, Warwick Freeman, and Kadri Mälk. Although I have some work by emerging artists, I tend to wait until they are a bit more mature. For example, I like the work of Attai Chen, Lola Brooks, Antje Brauer, Terhi Tolvanen and Tanel Veenre. I consider their work to be more developed conceptually and the craftsmanship to be more refined now they are entering their 40s and have passed the emerging stage.

Pieces in Susan Cummins’ art jewelry collection

What about the value of contemporary art jewelry? Can we also buy art jewelry as an investment, despite or precisely because the art jewelry materials are not always “valuable”?

I am not sure what to say about this question. The prices for art jewelry have definitely gone up in the last couple of decades, and you can regard it as an investment, but there are many market forces that should be in play in the field that are not. For example, art jewelry has been barely visible in auctions or secondary markets, so few independent prices have been set. Other markets, like the art market, use this as a way to establish more or less a true value. Although it isn’t always accurate, it acts as a balance to the dealer’s price.

A lot more work needs to be done, not only in the market place, but also in the research around the artists, and the field as a whole. This is something that Art Jewelry Forum has been trying to do for the past ten years. More books need to be produced with serious in-depth studies that explain why these objects and these artists are important. People believe books. They are impressive. We need lots more.

Tell us more about your perception of the art jewelry market – strengths, weaknesses, chances, and perspectives?

Again, I am not really sure what to say about this. I don’t think the market is super strong as it is. I think the economic model was pretty weak to start with, and so it might have to morph and change to keep going. Everyone complains that the audience is too small, and yet I am only aware of a handful of galleries who do things to expand it. Ornamentum, Sienna Gallery, Galerie SO, Galerie Marzee and a few others go to art or design fairs to reach a bigger audience. They will find a way to grow the field, and we have to give them lots of credit for the risks they are taking, which will help us all in the long run.

We are also seeing lots of new experimentation on the internet, and in artists’ cooperatives to try to find other ways to sell work. Schools continue to create determined and talented jewelers who will find a way to make part of their living from selling work. It has never been easy for artists to survive, and that is no different now or for this group of artists. It is a risky life choice, but an admirable one.

Susan Cummins’ working place

What is your relationship to other design and crafts? And to contemporary fine art?

As I mentioned earlier I have a contemporary art collection, but I don’t collect any other kind of craft or design. I read about everything, so I know a little bit about the wider field of visual arts, but mostly I know about art jewelry.

What should be the role of an art collector in general? What is your advice to young collectors?

I think collectors are responsible for supporting jewelry in many ways. Each collector, like each jeweler, has their own view of what they like and how they want to accumulate this work. I have worked with collectors for more than 20 years to try to establish their roles as serious and knowledgeable consumers of jewelry. In fact, that is why Art Jewelry Forum was started. I have enjoyed watching these people become more knowledgeable and more adventuresome in their purchases over the years. Many of these consumers have turned into collectors, and have given their jewelry to museums. In the process, they have not only helped to expose the field to other eyes, but also created opportunities for research and a new book in the form of a catalog to add to the argument for the value and validity of art jewelry. Other collectors, like Susan Beech, have given grants to encourage artists to do work they might not otherwise have the funds to make. Collectors can use their resources to do many things besides buying work. But whatever they do, we must all recognize their importance.

To young collectors – start where you are and grow.

Thank you very much for this interview, dear Susan!

PAULINA’S FRIENDS limited edition wine collection

Text: Paulina Tsvetanova 

PAULINA’S FRIENDS limited edition wine collection, in collaboration with SAMESAME unites meaningful enjoyment on multiple levels — the haptic touch of a supple, unique piece handmade from recycled glass, with the rich flavor of a millennia-old wine from Thrace. It’s no coincidence that even the bottle looks a bit tipsy. The object remains long after the wine has been enjoyed – whether as a bottle or vase, it’s up to you.

Good Wine Needs No Figurehead, nevertheless:

Edition: 25 unique hand-blown bottles

Varietal: Merlot

Style: strong, dry, spicy red wine

Year: 2015

Quality: Reserve

Place of origin: Thracian plains, South Bulgaria; verified and guaranteed denomination of origin

Volume: 0,7 – 1,3 L

Alcohol Content: 13,3 % VOL.

Temperature for consumption : 59-63 F

Seal: Natural cork

Allergy warning: contains sulfites

Price per bottle: 75 €

Tasting Notes: The clear, ruby red wine has intense top notes of ripe grapes and dark berries (blackberry, black currant, cherry), as well as fine wood aromas. The taste is soft and balanced – on the palate you can feel the wine’s substantial structure, which is at the same time juicy and velvety.

Bulgarian Wine – Cradle of the European Wine culture

In the Bronze Age wild vines were cultivated by the inhabitants of the Balkan Mountains. For this reason, Thrace is considered one of the birthplaces of European viticulture. Viticulture existed in this country since ancient times, when Thracian tribes from north and south of the Balkan Mountains cultivated wild vines and a celebrated a cult in honor of the god Dionysus. In the time of the Roman Empire, Thracian wine was a coveted export, shipped to Greece, Sicily, Asia Minor and Egypt. These ancient sites were then taken over by the Slavs and Bulgarians. In the Middle Ages, Bulgarian wine reached a climax, when local monasteries cultivated sprawling vineyards. In 1393, the Bulgarian Empire was conquered by the Turks. Despite the islamic ban on wine, Bulgarians were allowed to maintain their viticulture through 500 years of Turkish rule. After the Second World War, wine production was intensively promoted. Since then, it has developed into a huge industry. Bulgaria is now a leader in wine exportation – 90% of the wine produced in Bulgaria is exported, reaching more than 70 countries around the world.

Try it before it sells out!

Cheers!

An interview with Lydia Gastroph, owner of the label to promote mortality and life culture w e i s s über den tod hinaus

Text: Paulina Tsvetanova

Dear Lydia, you curate and sell artfully-designed urns and coffins created by recognized and aspiring artisans and designers. A very unconventional, innovative job! It’s no surprise you lectured as a founder at the annual Entrepreneurship Summit. Is your job your calling?

Dear Paulina. Yes, in my company w e i s s über den tod hinaus I sell caskets, urns and funeral jewelry designed and hand-crafted by renowned artists. I also curate exhibitions on the theme of “Farewell Art” in galleries, hospices, churches and other beautiful or unusual places. I created a “coffin shop” as a pop up store in downtown Munich. Due to popular demand of my customers, I have also started to work as an undertaker. I put all of my strength, my stamina, my enthusiasm, endless time, energy, motivation and love into this company. It is my calling, my passion.

Your company seeks to destigmatize the subjects of death, farewell, dying. In Germany as in other affluent societies, this subject is unfortunately very repressed and uncomfortable. Nowadays we do everything possible to us to optimize our longevity and even to bypass death, to prevent it or to age backwards. Why? Death is actually quite normal and part of life. Did your company emerge from a deep desire for social rethinking, or was there a more personal reason?

Fundamentally, I try to scrutinize and re-think the status quo: must things be as they are? Are there ways to embellish something to improve it, to humanize it, to make it sustainable and environmentally friendly? And I’m ready for radical social rethinking. It requires courage, to confront the taboo subject of death and set out to deal with such extreme experiences. As a young girl, I was deeply touched by the death of my classmate, who died at age 17 from leukemia.  At her funeral I felt that the old-fashioned, heavy, and massive coffin did not suit her. At other funerals later on, I often wondered at what I saw there, whether everything really must be so bleak, and whether a coffin must be so industrially-manufactured. The key experience establishing my company was my sister’s diagnosis with terminal cancer. With this, a process of profound personal confrontation with dying, death and goodbye was set in motion. My sister wanted to create her last farewell herself and I wanted to do something beautiful for her, a final kindness, so to speak. So I made it my goal to oppose the aesthetic and artististic deficit in our culture of grief, which I had long perceived, and to replace it with a culture of grief which is aesthetic, artistic and individual.

Your “products” are funerary art that can be used even in life, as a chest, box, cabinet, bench, etc. Is the multi-functionality of simple modern vessels a deliberate or conscious choice? Do you think that by integrating these objects into daily life, customers will not be put off by the “original function” of the vessels?

I place a great importance on the aesthetics, beauty and the high-quality artistic and craftsmanship of these “last things”. Our brain responds to unpleasant visual stimuli with fear and rejection. This is why I consider it wise to oppose the inconceivability of death with conscious, artistic design. Since my products can be easily integrated into a modern residential environment, both the coffins as furniture pieces, and the urns as vases or vessels, we have the opportunity to deal with death, which can enter our lives at any time, on a daily basis. From a pragmatic point of view, the multifunctionality of objects is useful both from the ecological as well as the economic point of view. If we consider that every single one of us has to be buried or burned by law in a coffin, it is certainly sensible to use it as a cabinet or chest in our lifetime.

Many young, healthy, living people buy such urns and coffins and put them in the living room. Isn’t that a little spooky? Do you think they like to deal with the issues of one’s own transience, the incomprehensible and the uncontrollable on an artistic level?

My experience in dealing with these “last things” has shown that these products encourage people to think and to feel relief, finally, to ask questions and communicate in a quite uninhibited way about the topic of death. People who want to deliberately prepare their burial have told me that it is soothing to know their last dwelling. It also opens the way to talk with relatives and friends about dying, death and burial, and to formulate wishes for their own farewell. Guests and friends who visit me at home are amazed at how beautiful this can look and how unproblematic it feels to live among the innumerable coffins and urns that populate my home. No one is creeped out by the coffin-cabinet which stands in my living room, on the contrary, it often inspires imitators. One can easily understand this: death belongs to life.

Unique, individual coffins and urns are part of the “artistic staging of death”. And isn’t this a pious thing from a Christian point of view?

To care for myself and for others, to bring love and appreciation to myself and my fellow human beings is a Christian commandment. This commandment does not end a person’s death. Individual design of the “last things” is like a final act of love. To want to give someone something special on his or her “last journey” is an expression of deep appreciation. Two years ago, I converted to the Catholic faith, not least of all because I am attracted and fascinated by artistically-designed churches. Would these spaces then also be irreverent from the Christian point of view?

Your customers certainly attach great importance to aesthetic design, sustainability and ethical values. While it can’t bring the deceased back to life, but it lightly softens and embellishes the grief. How would you describe your customers?

My customers are mostly people who have dealt with art, culture and design, or come from this professional environment, and want to be buried as they have lived. Many came first from my artistic circle of friends. They were thrilled that I could offer something that suited their views and their lifestyle. Now they had the opportunity to escape the “optical horror of burials” – as they called it. Others were looking for new forms of farewell design over the Internet, or attended one of my exhibitions and lectures.

You invite musicians and writers to some burials, where they create a burial as an unforgettable performance. What a beautiful appraisal of the deceased. So you place great emphasis on your rituals being different from the traditional. What is played, read, sung?

Rituals are culturally-integrated actions that make sense of things and provide support and guidance. I do not want to give in to trends, or to be flippant with the idea of ritual. Rituals emerge over long periods of time and have a deep meaning. Christian rituals, for example, give comfort through faith in resurrection. As part of a farewell gathering, I try to motivate the family members and the circle of friends to recite or perform something themselves. I make recommendations: music, which is played live, actors to read lyric or literary lectures, for example, one might read a poem by Robert Gernhardt. Dance, or even fairy tales, which are symbolic life-cycle stories. All this is carried out at the highest artistic level. It is important to be able to oppose the cookie-cutter “assembly line music” with live music – and especially the new and unpredictable, never before heard, composed specially for the occasion. I offer to people who want to plan their own funeral, to listen to music from the musicians who will later play at their burial. I once experienced a very moving live performance at the grave with the favorite songs “Strong as Two” by Udo Lindenberg and “Just to visit” from the Toten Hosen. The client could listen both as often as she wanted up until her death.

What is the biggest challenge in your job? Perhaps you would like to tell us an unforgettable situation from your professional life.

Probably sounds strange now, but the biggest challenge for me is to write bills for my services because I live from the death of other people. This always leaves me with a bad feeling, because my relationship with clients in this very personal, even intimate, situation is usually very intense, because it is difficult for me to draw the line between friendship and business. There have been many unforgettable situations. Many of them are too private to recount. I often think of how the white-tiled pathology of a hospital is suddenly transformed into an almost contemplative, spiritual place, thanks to the special charisma of one of our coffins. One of our terminal clients had us deliver his red coffin to the unused pool of his bungalow and photographed us enthusiastically. Just as my dying sister asked me one evening, to arrange her coffin interior, hand-felted for her personally by a textile artist, and her burial clothes, which she had arranged herself, before her sick bed.She remarked “Lovely, I like it. I am happy. You don’t need to put it away anymore” then, she sent me home. The next morning she died.

Do you try to alleviate the fear of death in your clients and your collaborators?

No, that would be presumptuous. A person can manage the fear of death only for his or herself. However, I believe that the struggle and the daily thought of death contribute to life’s wisdom.

Hermann Hesse said, “All art comes from the fear of death.” What is your personal relationship to death?

Fear of death compels me to deal with death and dying on an artistic level. I am fascinated by the border experiences that are reflected in art. Fear of death urges me to confrontation, not repression, in effect, according to the motto: “He who does not put himself into danger perishes in it.

My greatest sources of energy are silence and nature. I discovered a couple of nearby places where I can retreat when I need to gather my strength. When I’m alone there and can sink into the here and now, worldly pain, grief, compassion, compassion and self-compassion relativize themselves. If I can not drive out into nature, I search for churches, mostly architecturally modern, which do not distract from inward reflection. In addition, I regularly go to church on Sundays, which structures my work week and makes me pause, gives me comfort and lets me reflect on what is. I feel secure and welcome in a larger community. And I go as often as possible to my adopted homeland of Greece, where I can always find new strength — the light there heals all sorrow.

What is the greatest consolation for the people who know that are about to die? And for their relatives? What can a living person learn from death?

I heard Heini Staudinger give a wonderful lecture on this topic at the Entrepreneurship Summit. Like him, I would like to quote Rilke on this difficult question: “And when I go out of my garden in the evening, I am tired, I know: all the ways lead to the arsenal of the unlived things.” Staudinger interprets this as follows: An arsenal is a weapon room. When it is more and more filled with our own unlived life, our personal arsenals fill up with more and more aggression against ourselves, against the environment and against fellow human beings. What we can learn from death is to live our lives in mindfulness and not to suppress our finitude, but to consciously accept it.

Have you experienced any miracles? Someone prepared to die who then regained health instead, so everything was in vain?

No, but I hope I can still experience it.

And what about life after death?

If there is a life after death.

Actually, you are goldsmith and jewelry is your main area of success. Do you also make so-called mourning jewelry? How is it different from normal jewelry?

Around the turn of the century, mourning jewelry was an independent category of jewelry. I myself used to try to work with grief and loss, and to see whether I can handle these feelings in jewelry. And I’ve had success with this approach. Mountain crystal tears, which can be worn as earrings, and the like. For me, the medium of jewelry was never really suitable to combine with the subject of grief, although I now also exhibit contemporary jewelry artists who are intensively engaged in themes such as transience, morbidity, vanitas motifs and the like. From these two professional poles it has arisen that I have told my enterprise of Victor Hugo’s quotation: “Death and beauty are two profound things which carry shadow and light in equal measures, as they are two sisters, terrible and creative at the same time. Protecting the same puzzle and the same mystery.

What advice would you give young start-ups?

I would like to say from the heart, be very certain that your founding idea and what you are doing is coherent with and affected by who you are as a person. Today so much has become interchangeable. The virtual world is increasingly withdrawn from the deep human longings for closeness, security and mutual care. The central longing of all human beings, however, is to be touched and touched, not only physically, but, above all, internally. Do not neglect this aspect, because these are the basic needs of your future clients. Do what you do with love and: learn a craft art.

Dear Lydia, thank you very much for this wonderful interview!

w e i s s über den tod hinaus is prsent @ PAULINA’S FRIENDS in BIKINI BERLIN.

…Passion for Applied Art

We spoke with Dirk Allgaier, owner of Arnoldsche Art Publishers, about his publishing house, applied art today, and the distinctive quality of the printed book.

Text: Paulina Tsvetanova

Dirk Allgaier with a brooch by Babette von Dohnanyi. Photo: Miriam Künzli

Mr. Allgaier, Arnoldsche Art Publishers is, to my knowledge, the only German publisher specializing in the field of applied art. Especially in the areas of jewelry and ceramics, you are making a considerable contribution to the publication of these arts, which are somewhat neglected in the Central European region. What makes you different from other art publishers?

On a purely organization level, as far as production and distribution is concerned, we probably do not differ so much from other art book publishers. I think it is our passion for our books and for applied art in general which sets us apart. In our publishing houses in Stuttgart you can find not only a lot of books on these topics (also from other publishers), but also exhibitions of jewelry and ceramics from numerous international artists.

Besides this small in-house collection, each of us is personally interested in these art forms. For example, I am especially passionate about contemporary ceramics, as well as the decorative arts.

Since 2015, we have also expressed our enthusiasm for these art forms in a series of exhibitions, the “Arnoldsche Weekend Art Gallery”, which takes place twice a year. We’ve had the opportunity and the great pleasure to exhibit ceramic works by Beate Kuhn and Sebastian Scheid. In addition, this summer we displayed jewelry projects by Mari Ishikawa and ceramic sculptures by Thomas Bohle in our publishing houses. In November of this year, we will continue the series with jewelry by Silvia Weidenbach and ceramics by Karl Fulle, which I am particularly looking forward to.

How do you rate the applied arts / design scene in Germany? What are its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and risks?

The German applied art “scene” is quite small and manageable. This is, on the one hand, an advantage, because that offers opportunities for great growth. The challenge is to bring focus to the unique, unmistakable and inimitable features of the objects. One should try to get the “Brandthink” out of the minds of potential buyers, so that they are able to see, perceive and feel things again.

It’s easy to wear a piece of Cartier, Chanel or Versace jewelry, with a price tag to match, which is almost arbitrary and interchangeable. On the other hand, it’s much more exciting, communicative and socially-relevant to wear a piece by Bernhard Schobinger, Otto Künzli, Daniel Kruger or Tone Vigeland.

And at a fraction of the cost. There’s also the chance to discover talented newcomers. I can purchase a ceramic or glass sculpture at the highest level of design for a few hundred euros. And you really have to look for a long time to find unique pieces in the fine arts.

What can applied art/craft learn from art and vice versa?

In my opinion, the separation between applied and visual art is purely academic. If you are get into the adventure of ceramic arts or jewelry art or glass arts, you will soon find that these are merely different, but equivalent, highly complex artistic forms of expression that are in no way inferior to the supposedly canonical arts of painting, sculpture, architecture, photography or performance art.

The reception of these art forms, for example, is much more open in the Scandinavian countries than in Germany. Or think about the Turner Prize, which was awarded to Grayson Perry in 2003. This was a sensation, as the renowned art prize was presented to a “ceramicist”, which made headlines and showed that although the jury was aware of the value of “ceramics” as a form of artistic expression, the media was less so.

Maybe it is less the case that these arts learn from one another. Rather that they fertilize one another. In any case, with our publishing program, we are concerned with offering the so-called applied arts a forum which, in our opinion, it clearly deserves.

Just recently, I read an interview with the gallery owner Jörg Johnen in ZEIT, on the mission of his gallery for contemporary art. He draws attention to the ceramic arts that have fallen into oblivion in the last 20 years. For him, it is an exciting counterpoint to the constant sampling and tweaking of young contemporary art, to the “mouse click art”, as he says, which sooner or later gets tiresome.

He attributes to contemporary art hardly any depth of thought and experience. But that is exactly what I find in the applied arts, and perhaps it is what the visual arts can learn from them again?

Since 2015, you have been the publisher of Arnoldsche Art Publishers, where you have been working for over 20 years and have been responsible for the support of international publishing partners. Tell us a bit about your professional career, from your study of archeology to your challenges as a publisher.

In 1992, I finished my Master’s in archaeological studies. I had always wanted to work in a publishing house. So, I started to work towards a professional training certificate at Klett in Stuttgart. Part of this training was a three-month internship in a publishing house.

I did my internship at Arnoldschen. After the end of the three months, I didn’t even go back to school, but stayed on at the Arnoldschen as the first permanent employee.

In hindsight it’s already fascinating to see how publishing has become more professionalized and internationalized in these 20 years. Also I was able to really understand the transition in retail purchasing from traditional book sellers to online merchants (mostly Amazon).

Previously, the bookselling trade was a reliable way for small, specialized publishers to reach customers. This is no longer the case, far from it, since half of the bookselling trade has disappeared over the past 20 years, and many bookshops can no longer afford to carry a large assortment in their store. I see this as a major challenge to keeping our potential customers informed of our publishing program as professionally and comprehensively as possible.

Nowadays many people no longer know the experience of flipping through a printed, tactile book, of experiencing its smell. In the age of social media, many young people have missed not only the experience of reading printed media, but also the experience of the sensuous feelings associated with it. This loss has an impact on our quality of life. How do you see these developments and what do you do as a publisher?

I find it wonderful that you point out the tactile characteristics of the printed book as a medium. There is no digital substitute! But do not forget also the design of a book that is not subject to the dynamic design of an e-book. Each page – or in our perspective, double-page – is composed!

Whether an artist’s monograph or a museum catalogue, a book possesses its own rhythm, its own structure, its own sequence, which can be grasped only by going through the whole book. If a (supposedly only) analog medium, it is nevertheless a separate format – different from an exhibition, an online appearance, a database, etc. – and this format can not be totally replaced (at least so far)!

For us, to design a book is to create a visual translation of the work of an artist or a collection or a topic into the two-dimensional, printed book form. In addition, an author thinks twice about what he or she writes, it is not so “rapid fire” as on the Internet. A book provides considerations which are thought out to the end, to which one can refer back, there is nothing “rapid fire” about it.

By the way, I don’t think that young people don’t know what a book is, or don’t read. Even young people know about the experience and the value of a book — who doesn’t? More problematic is the fact that fewer and fewer people are interested in applied art. Or collect it — that is, for me at least, to surround themselves with these works of art in everyday life.

The art market may have drifted a little too far into an investment market, which makes it hard for the applied arts to keep up with the market or, on the other hand, to offer the applied arts the chance to gain credibility through a genuine, authentic presentation.

So what can we publishers do? Well, we continue to publish outstanding books of what we see as urgently noteworthy artistic perspectives from today’s so-called applied art. Should I name some books at this point? Probably not, but you should definitely be familiar with “Passion for Ceramics: The Collection of Frank Nievergelt “, the publication of an outstanding collection of wisely- and expertly-curated ceramic art from the past 40 years.

Or the publication “Barbara Cartlidge and Electrum Gallery”, which documents the gallery owner and the gallery par excellence, which was one of only three galleries which gave a voice to jewelry art in the twentieth century.

Do you have a favorite publication?

I love every single one of our publications! Among our ceramic publications, my favorite is the two-volume “Vase / Sculpture” from the GRASSI Museum Leipzig, which documents the extraordinary variety and beauty of contemporary ceramic arts and is now referred to as “the Bible of ceramic publications” by connoisseurs. But I’d also say that the wonderful ceramic monographs of the Austrian Thomas Bohle, the Norwegian Torbjørn Kvasbø or the Japanese Yasuhisa Kohyama can be counted among my “favorite” books.

As far as jewelry goes, of course, the long-out-of-print catalogue of the jewelry collection of Helen Drutt “Ornament as Art”, 2007 in cooperation with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. But the jewelry monographs of Thomas Gentille, Mari Ishikawa and Daniel Kruger also appeal to me in their individuality and proximity to the work of the artists.

Very close are the three volumes “Fired by Passion” with more than 1,400 pages on the early Viennese porcelain of DuPaquier, which was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2009.

Tell us about your current projects.

We are currently working on more than 20 publications. They are all exciting! I can tell you that much in advance. This year books are still appearing. For example, about Edgar Degas, about the graphic work of jewelry artists, the Russian Constructivist architect Boris Velikovsky, about Japanese food and its various cultural aspects, as well as jewelry made of precious stones and other materials found in the Idar-Oberstein area over the past ten years.

Even just the selection of these few books shows the great range of our publications this year. Not to mention “The Flying Leaves”, a historical collection of 15th and 16th century leaflets, a first-rate cultural treasure which we are very honored to be publishing. And all this from a small team of four hard-working, ambitious employees, all of whom strongly identify with the direction of our publishing program.

How do you envision the future of Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Mr. Allgaier?

Rosy, what else? If I shared the widespread opinion that the art book was at its end, I would have to hang up my hat! The well-made, high-quality art book has its place in our lives and thus a future. Nothing you can find online, even if it’s more-or-less well-informed, or even an up-to-date museum inventory, no Pinterest page, no Facebook account of an artist, no moderated Wikipedia entry can offer you the same value that you get from a carefully thought-out and planned book.

And then I have to go back to what I called the “visual translation” in book form, a book, especially an art book, is carefully composed, it opens up an inimitable, access to a topic which you cannot get anywhere else. Be inspired, enjoy and discover – it’s a way to discover art!

But, one should always look at the original, this is a completely different experience. I therefore recommend our “Arnoldsche Art Gallery” November 11th to 13th, for the stunning jewelery objects by Silvia Weidenbach and the inspiring ceramics by Karl Fulle, because nothing – not even a book – replaces the original!

You will find these publications from Arnoldsche at Paulina’s Friends in Bikini Berlin:

We visited the product designer and installation artist Carolin Koch in her workshop in Berlin-Rixdorf and spontaneously photographed what was lying around her studio. This was a real wunderkammer experience!

Text: Paulina Tsvetanova

Carolin, Rixdorf is very little-known part of Neukölln. What brought you here?

Before coming here, I lived in Kreuzberg for almost a year. I wanted to look for a new apartment to enlarge my space. I always found Neukölln interesting, with its rough pavement and the opportunity to further develop the neighborhood. A close friend had heard about an apartment recently vacated by his housekeeper, and I moved in.

In your first life you were goldsmith. How does a goldsmith become an artist?

Oy, that question can hardly be answered in a few sentences. I would have to go on a bit. In my life, nothing happens by chance. Many of the decisions I’ve made haven’t been clear from the start. Back when I was about to take the Abitur I had no idea what I wanted to do afterwards. One of my classmates told me of her desire to become a goldsmith. “Aha, Goldsmithing, that might be something,” I thought. In any case, it wasn’t something to study, but it was a craft I could learn. At that time, there were only a few places to train as a goldsmith. Another of my classmates knew the owner of a goldsmithy. Working there for the next three-and-a-half years, I benefited from a lot of training. The highlight was the vocational day school in Cologne that I attended on Fridays. My boss was an excellent draftsman and designer. I was always fascinated by the idea of taking my own creations on paper and realizing them in 3D. After the apprenticeship, I studied design with a specialization in product design in Münster. That’s another story. How much time do you have, Paulina? I met an artist who invited me to exhibit in her studio. That was shortly before my move to Berlin in late 2008. On this occasion, I created the first of my framed-object pieces out of natural materials. Ja… and in Berlin I have developed further. My participation in “48 hours Neukölln” 2009 was like a springboard for me.

Do you view yourself as a designer, an artist or a craftswoman? These categories are getting more and more fluid these days. How can they be combined? Where does art end and design begin, and vice versa?
It is exactly this mixture. I am neither one nor the other. The mixture makes the charm. My study of design has trained me in appearances and function. My artistic side creates patterns of order, turns everything on its head and/or combines things which don’t seem to go together. I need the craftsmanship to implement my ideas. The border is fluid, yes — I share your opinion. And I welcome it very much. I find it nonsensical to separate the one from the other. I myself don’t ask what is what. I do it because I like this blurring of genres and I like to avoid categories. Why? This, precisely, is artistic freedom.

Your work lives on small stories – sometimes mind-boggling, often deeply hidden … Your personal story briefly summarized?

Summarizing briefly is not exactly one of my strengths, as you may have noticed. Okay. Three words that sum it up: coincidences, coincidences, coincidences. “Fate” also works. But the English word “serendipity” for “happy coincidence” expresses it best. I was just born under a lucky star.

You have succeeded in approaching your hobby, namely gathering everyday things that most people do not notice, with an almost scientific meticulousness, and putting these things into a new context. Where does it come from? Is there a childhood story that inspired this?
Interesting question. Is there an origin? Yes, perhaps. As a child, I liked to play with wooden blocks, marbles, spools of yarn, or other things that seem to be the same and yet all different in detail. I like to sort and order. This is reflected in my work.

You get to the heart of things, to capture their peculiarities, to improve them. Your approach is like a sort of alchemy. Where do you find your “gold”?
Frequently on the street. My gaze is like a detector pointed down, rather than straight ahead. Sometimes it is gifts from friends. There is a great junk store on Richardstraße. They somehow have everything, from office clamps to living room cabinets. If I don’t find what I am looking for, I find something else, which sometimes fits even better or inspires a different idea. Often, I find without searching.

Does everything that you collect show signs of use? … Is everything “vintage” or are there works that arise from new “relics of everyday life”?
I’ve also tried to buy and incorporate new things. But these objects can be overly slick, they have not experienced anything. Too boring. The patina of the object speaks without words and is much more exciting. I did do a project with ice spoons, which I bought, but I altered their appearance. That’s how it goes. They are still waiting for me to deal with them.

Your workshop is a veritable museum. You are literally surrounded and absorbed by your found objects. Don’t you need a little privacy to gather energy and strength for the next journey of discovery? 

Among other things, this is my inspiration. I don’t like completely white walls. I need a visual abundance for new ideas. All of the things around me are not always present, though. I store some in cases or assortment boxes. For a recent exhibition, I gathered up everything from this stock that had touched me in some way. Gradually the piece developed from this.

How important is color to you?
Color has only recently become very important to me. Color is life and energy. You can use colors discreetly as accents, use them in a targeted manner or just let them pop. In my more recent work, I’ve been working with neon-colored poster cartons. Recently, at “48 hours Neukölln” in 2016, I used fluorescent colors and black light. This created a beautiful effect.

And how does two-dimensionality relate to three-dimensionality in your work?
Everything is possible and can be combined. There are no borders.

Arranging a number of the same kinds of objects has a contemplative component. Is this a sort of meditation for you?
Well yes, even consciously. In my work with these objects, I am sometimes so drawn in and concentrated that it can surely count as some form of meditation. It is moments of happiness.

Do you have a favorite piece and why?
The work with the Pink Panther comes to mind. The Panther is placed between a question and the somewhat hidden answer. He acts as a questioner and encourages the viewer to find the answer. I like this kind of interaction, and, of course, the Panther himself.

Are there any works that you do not want to part with, as they symbolize an intimate, personal story?
Thankfully not. Everything I put together can and should change owners. I am happy when others get find joy in my works.

On a related note, you curated an exhibition with real stories from different people and their corresponding story-tellers, in the framework of 48 Hours in Neukölln.

Can one bring you a personal history, for you to tell it anew? A personal work of art as a commission? Is this a work of immortalization or of therapeutic transformation?

In 2015, the theme of the festival was “S.O.S. – Art Saves the World “. I asked some friends to tell me about a personal experience that was especially meaningful, which they connect with an object. By integrating each story with a humorous or playful art object, I wanted to create a new, positive context between object and storyteller. I hope that it has worked for me here and there. This was my own thematic project.

For a commissioned work, it is less therapeutic. It is actually more about immortalization. Or maybe it is therapeutic, who knows. That would be a wonderful side effect. If I receive an item from the customer, I would like to know its exact significance. This is important in order to create the right framework for this object, in the truest sense of the word. My questions to the client are sometimes then passed through the family to find an answer. This is exciting, also for me.

So I tell a story which is not new, rather I bring together everything that already belongs to the object, everything that adds to its meaning. Here my thoughts can already go in many directions. So my customers are often surprised by the final piece.

Your love for detail characterizes you as a person. What about the big picture – do you have a mental image of it from the beginning, or does it develop over the course of the work?

It is rare that I have a picture in mind. It is a process. A lot of things are only revealed in the composition. You can sense it, even if it doesn’t all fit together yet. Then I cut something out, exchange something or add something new. Here too, chance is a good advisor. The work does not only come from the gut. The mind creates the concept and can be guided by feeling.

You produce all of your frames by yourself. Often the art is created by the frame itself.
I can’t make all of my frames myself. I work with a wonderful carpenter who has the soul of a designer and artist. The content and the frame are part of a concept. I do not separate that.

In addition to your installations, you also work as a product designer? Tell us a bit about your projects. What have been your favorite so far?  

My study of design has provided me with an important foundation in many respects. However, I no longer understand myself as a pure product designer. Like in a well-mixed cocktail, I mix the best parts of everything I’ve learned. A product, or rather a project, which has accompanied me since my studies, is “seveninone”, a chewing gum bag which I have developed for stick gum. It is, if you like, very near to my heart. I’ve been chewing gum for ages and it was also the topic of my diploma thesis.

How would you characterize your clients?
Appreciative, humorous, open, detail-loving, warm and affectionate.

Is there something you hope to do in the future?
On my own intellectual backburner, for the past few years I’ve been playing around with the concept for a journey through all 16 German states… I would stage whatever I find on the road, what people give me, or what I come across otherwise, in some way that speaks to the state in which I found it. This could be exciting, because I don’t have a plan for what it will look like. At this point I can just plan the route.

Many thanks, dear Carolin, for your thoughts and for the wonderful time that we spent in your exceptional habitat.
Find more about Carolin Koch’s work here.

Founded in Brazil by Simone Simonato, SICA label specializes on sourcing discarted fabrics to be redesigned supporting local businesses.

Text: Paulina Tsvetanova

The collection is 100 % hand-woven in Bangladesh. SICA supports local artisans by developing manufacturing skills, raising labor standards and employment in decentralized areas.

Based in Berlin since 2012, Simone produces her products in Bangladesh not only to gather the humongous amount of waste generated from the fashion industry but also to support job opportunities in rural communities. She conducts various training workshops to impart the requisite skills to the artisans. This enables the artisans – mostly women – to produce specific and high quality products, which can be sold across the world under the label SICA.

SICA Clipping Up is an up-cycled bag collection. Made of textile waste from discarded fabrics (jersey clippings) generated by the local textile factories. The Clipping Up collection is a fair-trade cooperation specialized on traditional craftsmanship in rural areas.

“The concept of Sica Clipping Up is to bring together traditional handcraft and recycling of industrial textile waste in order to produce unique products that not only make my customers happy but also provide employment and dignity to the workers in rural area of Bangladesh.” says founder Simone Simonato.

We are proud to present SICA in PAULINA’S FRIENDS concept store in Bikini Berlin !