Thursday, April 3, 2008

Karl Fritsch





^^ This ring is my absolute favorite, I LOVE the oxidized silver and topaz integration, such a fun and whimsical design, I love the swirls and how the gem 'floats'.  I would live in this ring and never take it off.  I really wish I could own this!




Karl Fritsch was among one of the artists at Jewelerswerk, I really love his stuff.  When we learned about the materials project today I thought back to his work, I like his "stacked" type of pieces.  I'm pretty sure at Jewelerswerk that they said his work is epoxied (if thats a correct word, haha) together.  His work is really cool.  I was just reading how he uses his fingers to mold the bands on some of the rings, hence the fingerprint textures on a lot of them,  I think that adds a really unique aspect.  I was looking at the Jewelerswerk site just a minute ago and he is listed as an upcoming show starting April 11, I know some of his work was displayed there already, but I'm hoping some more pieces will be there as well, I'm planning on going to the Smithsonian Craft show and want to stop into Jewelerswerk again, so I'll be on the lookout for some more cool stuff!
His work is a good inspiration to fly off from.  The other day sitting in my writing class my mind was endlessly wandering and I was thinking how I could make a ring with that whole stacking stones/materials technique. The crazy shapes in his work are an inspiration.  I'm really into obnoxiously huge rings, my main focus in the work I want to produce is crazy cocktail rings.  Sitting with my wandering mind I was thinking of making a customizable ring that you can change day to day.  Kind of like all of those crazy "7 days of the week things" like underwear sets, sock sets, or shirt sets.  I was thinking that this might be a great and easily produced idea and I even got into thinking about some cool packaging for it, kind of its own mini-jewelry box with all the pieces needed to make your ring of the day and a cool pamphlet for some solutions and various looks.  I'm really in love with this idea.  The idea would be extremely simple, a simple fabricated band with a hole in the top.  You would get various lengths of tube to go with your ring, to customize the height and how crazy you want to go, maybe some star patterned tube prongs. There would be a screw in piece to top it off and hold the pieces in place securely.  Then you'd get a variety of materials or pieces (i don't want to say the word 'bead' but along that line)  I'm thinking glass pieces, some sheet charms, maybe even sequins.  I can see I'm heading for an insomniac night so if I get some definitive sketches to illustrate this, I'll throw them up here.  I'm pretty excited to see if I can execute this idea.

1 comment:

susannahnaree said...

BEAUTIFUL rings. My favorite was the one that you commented on too. =) It has that rough, rustic look combined with the polished, bright stone.. so nice. I would buy that if i had a lot of $. I wonder if you could do something like that with concrete?