Going into a workshop is like setting foot into someone’s home. It is a very personal territory, a place intimately built to the image and likeness of those who work there. When we look at a work on display in an exhibition, this mainly reveals the final act in a creative process that nevertheless maintains a certain distance between the observer and the maker. It is often said that the artist hides behind his work, as if to conceal his fears, efforts, doubts. The workshop, on the other hand, is all that we have not been told of a piece. The time spent experimenting, finding the right solution, intuition, the right motion. The bench is the physical materialization of the goldsmith’s thought, through which he seeks to control the emotional part of his act.
For contemporary jewellery, the bench takes on a double meaning; the first where it becomes spokesman of the concept of value itself, defined as the representation of time necessary to make the piece, the technical skill acquired, the identity of the maker and the second where it embodies the idea of handmade as opposed to industrially produced. Unlike in traditional jewellery, in contemporary jewellery there are many portrayals of the bench, each being representative of a different creative approach. We go from the traditional jeweller’s bench full of tools to work metals, to a table full of pieces of paper and glue, fabric or plastic.
So, it is from here, from this simple table, that we want to explore a world that is still a mystery of "creation" to many.
Author: Rita Marcangelo. Director of Alternatives gallery. Jewellery designer. Co-founder of AGC Contemporary Jewellery Association. Curator of numerous national and international exhibitions. Curator of the Cominelli Foundation permanent collection. She has written numerous articles on contemporary jewellery.