tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/jewelry-7471/articles
Jewelry – The Conversation
2023-03-22T12:40:12Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199945
2023-03-22T12:40:12Z
2023-03-22T12:40:12Z
Who keeps the engagement ring after a breakup? 2 law professors explain why you might want a prenup for your diamond
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515221/original/file-20230314-3889-h0hg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C13%2C2836%2C2012&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A celebrity's engagement ring can cost millions of dollars.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jennifer-lopez-ring-detail-visits-the-elvis-duran-z100-news-photo/1141458193">Noam Galai/Getty Images Entertainment</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got engaged the first time, in 2002, he gave her a very pricey ring. That <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a36396344/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-relationship-timeline/">engagement ring was reportedly worth as much as $2.5 million</a>, made by luxury jeweler <a href="https://www.harrywinston.com/en">Harry Winston</a> and adorned with a 6.1-carat pink diamond.</p>
<p>After the movie stars broke up in 2004 without getting married, J. Lo said she <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=116547">intended to return the ring “quietly</a>” to Affleck. Whether or <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/jennifer-lopez-may-still-ben-210155174.html">she ever did that or not</a>, was Lopez entitled to keep the that rock or any of the others she got from her <a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/relationships/a27054533/jennifer-lopez-husband-list/">numerous ex-husbands and former fiancés</a>?</p>
<p>The answer can matter to anyone who is engaged, married – or even thinking about tying the knot. No one knows for sure how many engagements end in a breakup, although there are estimates that roughly <a href="https://www.wpdiamonds.com/when-and-why-relationships-end/">1 in 5 do so</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rUM_0msAAAAJ">law professors who teach property</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gCJEShUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">family law</a>, we frequently talk to students – and our own relatives – about gifts and marriage. Students often ask us who owns the engagement ring if couples don’t get married or if they eventually divorce. They also want to know what happens if the ring is stolen. </p>
<p>While taxes, laws and insurance are not very sexy topics, marriage has never been only about romance. It’s also a partnership with economic repercussions.</p>
<h2>Rare before the 20th century</h2>
<p>Engagement rings were fairly rare until about 100 years ago, even though the first diamond engagement ring was apparently given by <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1589&context=law_faculty_scholarship">Emperor Maximilian to Mary of Burgundy in 1377</a>. But it wasn’t until the end of the Great Depression that a <a href="https://wizardofads.org/learning-from-legends-when-the-obstacle-is-the-way/">sophisticated advertising campaign created a market</a> for diamond engagement rings in the United States.</p>
<p>By 1940, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/">10% of brides</a> received diamond rings. That share jumped to 80% by 1990. </p>
<p>Perhaps propelled by the belief that a ring should cost <a href="https://www.theknot.com/content/spending-three-months-salary-on-engagement-ring">as much as a man earns in three months</a>, expensive diamond engagement rings grew in popularity from 1935 to 1965. </p>
<h2>No recourse for jilted grooms</h2>
<p><a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1589&context=law_faculty_scholarship">Law professor Margaret Brinig has found</a> that legal changes coincided with the new customs around the mid-20th century.</p>
<p>Specifically, Brinig points to the abolition of the lawsuits known as “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/breach_of_promise">breach of promise</a>” actions, which could be filed after broken engagements.</p>
<p>That is, brides could keep rings – even expensive ones – without getting married.</p>
<p>This new convention, Brinig has written, could have served as a form of <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1589&context=law_faculty_scholarship">compensation if the bride had lost her virginity</a> after getting engaged. Should the marriage not happen, she’d at least have <a href="http://ndlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/7.-Carbone.pdf">something of value to hold onto</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bride and groom figurines arranged to look angry at each other on either side of a knife cutting a wedding cake in half." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515222/original/file-20230314-3596-zq1rn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are they arguing over who gets to keep the ring?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/bride-and-groom-relationship-breakdown-royalty-free-image/1133839838">Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No-fault engagements?</h2>
<p>In the second half of the 20th century, U.S. divorce laws changed, and courts <a href="https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3319&context=lawreview">stopped determining who was to blame</a> when married couples broke up. In what came to be known as <a href="https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-is-no-fault-divorce">no-fault divorce</a>, neither spouse had to prove the other had cheated or been cruel to them.</p>
<p>And, as <a href="https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/9106">law professor Rebecca Tushnet documents</a>, many courts have applied a similar “no-fault” framework to broken engagements. That means it <a href="https://www.ali.org/publications/show/property-wills-and-other-donative-transfers/">doesn’t matter who broke it off</a>, or why.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/pa-superior-court/1255400.html">addressing that rule in 1997</a>, three judges on a Pennsylvania superior court drew on the story of Adam and Eve, meandered into Roman times and then announced “the gift of the ring to [the bride] at the time of their betrothal was subject to an implied condition requiring its return if the marriage did not take place.”</p>
<p>And that was in a case in which a man who had proposed to his girlfriend called off the engagement twice.</p>
<p>Courts in <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/court-of-appeals/1990/89-1570-0.html">Iowa</a>, <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/mi-court-of-appeals/1044071.html">Michigan</a>, <a href="https://casetext.com/case/benassi-v-back-neck-pain-clinic">Minnesota</a>, <a href="https://casetext.com/case/cooley-v-tucker">Mississippi</a> and other states have issued similar rulings.</p>
<h2>Different states, different stakes</h2>
<p>But the <a href="https://casetext.com/case/albinger-v-harris">Supreme Court of Montana</a> held in 2002 that an ex-fiancée could keep her engagement ring after a breakup. Noting that women “often still assume the bulk of pre-wedding costs,” the court expressed concerns that treating engagement rings as gifts conditional upon marriage could perpetuate gender bias. </p>
<p><a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/tx-court-of-appeals/1353139.html">And a Texas court</a> ruled a year later that someone who gave an engagement ring to his fiancée and then later called off the wedding was not entitled to its return. </p>
<p>In California, <a href="https://casetext.com/statute/california-codes/california-civil-code/division-3-obligations/part-2-contracts/title-1-nature-of-a-contract/chapter-3-consent/section-1590-recovery-of-gift-or-money-or-property-made-on-assumption-marriage">a state law enacted in 1939 provides</a> that the ring must be returned if the marriage is broken off by mutual consent or the person who received an engagement ring initiates the breakup.</p>
<p>Regardless of where you live, if you’re legally obligated to return an engagement ring and fail to do so, you may be on the hook for <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/in-court-of-appeals/1035723.html">monetary damages</a>. This can lead to financial hardship when rings are lost, stolen or <a href="https://casetext.com/case/harris-v-davis-7">intentionally thrown away</a>.</p>
<h2>Tax consequences</h2>
<p>If one person keeps the ring after a breakup, there may be <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/frequently-asked-questions-on-gift-taxes">gift tax consequences</a> for the person who bought the ring. But that’s only if the ring costs more than $17,000, and there are a <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/more-than-half-of-americas-100-richest-people-exploit-special-trusts-to-avoid-estate-taxes">lot of variables and loopholes</a> that can reduce the chances that a jilted ex would ever owe any money to the Internal Revenue Service.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/gift-tax-exclusion">Anyone can make gifts</a> worth <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/frequently-asked-questions-on-gift-taxes">up to $17,000 per year</a>, as of 2023, to anyone else without incurring consequences. Gifts worth more than that threshold are officially subject to a gift tax, and <a href="https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/estate-tax-and-lifetime-gifting">the IRS requires</a> that <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-709">taxpayers report</a> the amount of those gifts annually.</p>
<p>As of 2023, taxpayers also may give away gifts totaling <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/whats-new-estate-and-gift-tax">$12.92 million</a> during their whole lifetimes, or after death in their wills, with no tax-related consequences. </p>
<p>But gifts of $17,000 or more will eat into that credit. </p>
<h2>Planning ahead</h2>
<p>Anyone who gets engaged can <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/how-to-insure-an-engagement-ring-7198192">insure a ring</a>.</p>
<p>And while <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/disclaimer/">no readers should see this article as a source of personal legal advice</a>, we do note that engaged couples can set their own rules. Courts will generally enforce written agreements reached between two people who plan on getting married that stipulate who gets the ring after a breakup.</p>
<p>Couples can draft or sign a ring-related contract, particularly if that piece of jewelry has great sentimental or monetary value. </p>
<p>We understand that such paperwork might not materialize during a time of bended knees and joyful celebration. We also get that what people do with their rings when an engagement is called off isn’t just a matter of what the law requires.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1513562732355796997"}"></div></p>
<h2>Few such lawsuits</h2>
<p>Perhaps not surprisingly, we have found relatively few cases in which someone sued an ex over this issue.</p>
<p>Not even Ben Affleck did that. Had he tried to sue J. Lo in 2004 in a California court, he might have won. But his success would have turned on how the engagement ended.</p>
<p>Besides, as you may have heard, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22629442/bennifer-jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-reunion-explained">high-profile couple reunited in 2021</a> and married in 2022.</p>
<p>The second engagement ring <a href="https://www.brides.com/story/jennifer-lopez-engagement-ring-alex-rodriguez">Affleck gave Lopez is reportedly worth $5 million</a> – probably double that of the first one. J. Lo gets to keep that huge, rare green diamond forever now that she’s saying her name is <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2022/11/08/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-last-name-vogue/8300569001/">Mrs. Jennifer Lynne Affleck</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Just like the rest of us, celebrities take different approaches to deciding who gets the engagement ring when they get engaged but never tie the knot.
Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia
Julia D. Mahoney, Professor of Law, University of Virginia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129333
2020-01-14T13:48:25Z
2020-01-14T13:48:25Z
‘Uncut Gems’ celebrates Manhattan’s Diamond District, a neighborhood that’s a window into the past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309734/original/file-20200113-103954-14t68el.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A diamond wholesaler displays two three-carat diamonds in Manhattan's Diamond District.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-NY-USA-DIAMOND-DISTRICT/f7a26d1f947744b0940390ec173eb574/38/0">AP Photo/Kathy Willens</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In “<a href="https://a24films.com/films/uncut-gems">Uncut Gems</a>,” an overleveraged diamond jeweler named Howard Ratner, played by Adam Sandler, frantically tries to cover his bad business bets by making bigger ones. </p>
<p>The film brilliantly captures the manic energy of New York City’s Diamond District, a bustling commercial stretch on Manhattan’s 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. A preserve for the barter economy and the transaction sealed by a handshake, this small slice of the city has sustained a unique way of life.</p>
<p>It has survived urban decay, revitalization and gentrification. It has withstood the rise of modern finance and e-commerce, resisted economic booms and busts, and adapted to the ebbs and flows of global migration. </p>
<p>In my book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">Stateless Commerce: The Diamond Network and the Persistence of Relational Exchange</a>,” I explore how New York’s Diamond District seems to withstand the forces of economic change. I found that the mechanisms of a pre-modern economy are precisely the devices that allow diamond merchants to thrive in the 21st century.</p>
<h2>A 17th-century industry in a 21st-century city</h2>
<p>From the mid-19th century until the 1920s, New York’s diamond epicenter was Maiden Lane, four blocks north of Wall Street. When wealthier banks started driving up downtown rents in the 1920s, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/realestate/31scap.html">diamond businesses started moving uptown to 47th Street</a>. </p>
<p>Forty-seventh Street’s significance grew substantially as refugee diamond merchants fled to New York during World War II. When Belgium and Israel <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=349040">established themselves as post-WWII diamond hubs</a>, the industry for decades was dominated by Jewish merchants triangulating from Antwerp, Tel Aviv and New York. A visitor in the 1970s would have heard as much Yiddish and Hebrew as American English. Starting in the 1990s, <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb4c/78fd9b3e2c512af09e469758dc6280b5405e.pdf">a surge of Indian diamond merchants</a> entered the industry, eventually making Mumbai the unquestioned capital of today’s diamond world. </p>
<p>Even as the faces have changed, business practices have remained the same. The New York Times in 2001 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/business/the-diamond-game-shedding-its-mystery.html">described 47th Street</a> as “an anachronism, a 17th-century industry smack in the middle of a 21st-century city.” And an ethnographer of 47th Street <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801439896/diamond-stories/">once said</a> that the diamond industry allows its residents “to mix in and stay apart, [to] adapt to new times in ways that are both modern and traditional, indeed ancient.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309735/original/file-20200113-103971-1qma7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three men converse in Manhattan’s Diamond District.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/three-men-conversing-on-a-sidewalk-in-the-diamond-district-news-photo/174011279">Frederick Kelly/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The district’s endurance is remarkable. It withstood the area’s decline in the 1970s and 1980s, a period when Times Square – just a few blocks west of the district – was home to a high crime rate, peep shows and what Rolling Stone <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/18/us/80s-times-square-then-and-now/index.html">called</a> “the sleaziest block in America.” </p>
<p>More recently, the district has survived the area’s rapid gentrification. The district remains an island of cramped retail space and backroom manufacturing even as Manhattan commercial rents <a href="https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/manhattan-office-rents-reach-historic-high-cbre">reach historic highs</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJYU6alFZmE&feature=youtu.be">Visit 47th Street today</a>, and the stylish pedestrians of Fifth and Sixth Avenues vanish. In their place are elderly, ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing black overcoats and fedoras; south and central Asians with traditional karakul hats; and gaggles of merchants shouting in languages from across the world.</p>
<p>Diamond merchants – also known as “<a href="https://www.yourdictionary.com/diamantaire">diamantaires</a>” – openly do business on the sidewalk, negotiating terms for bundles of gemstones as if they were fruit in an open-air market. Others bark on cellphones and hold briefcases handcuffed to their wrists, sealing deals <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/magazine/the-secret-slang-of-the-diamond-district.html">using lingo</a> that outsiders can’t comprehend. Jewelry salespeople peddle their products to passersby, luring customers in a way that evokes the merchants of an Old World bazaar.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309739/original/file-20200113-103966-2x811z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Deals are made out in the open.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-United-/ee7cd05f5fe5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo/Mark Lennihan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Massive risk – with no legal recourse</h2>
<p>How has the diamond district withstood the pressures of time?</p>
<p>It helps to understand <a href="https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=845069121118112102089122031091089100034054008081016087100064097026124074076088026106117048061042052044115124016076071086019091112042011052088086087013065118115069003089023096003127066115114117002021088109083082105121111117084073003077105026019115068&EXT=pdf">the mechanics of a typical diamond transaction</a>. </p>
<p>Practically all diamonds on 47th street are new ones; very few come from pawns or estate sales. They arrive in New York by multiple pathways, but as an example: the diamond giant DeBeers mines stones in Africa and then sells them rough or uncut in London. These are resold in Antwerp. Then most go to Mumbai and Gujarat, India for polishing and cutting, before arriving at 47th Street, where they are then sold to dealers and jewelry manufacturers.</p>
<p>Forty-seventh Street is, in fact, a thick network of middlemen, with diamantaires buying and selling large caches of diamonds much like stock brokers buy and sell at the New York Stock Exchange. And since diamonds are so expensive – a pocketful of diamonds easily exceeds hundreds of thousands of dollars in value – diamantaires rarely have sufficient liquid assets to pay for stones in cash. So they rely on purchasing stones on credit.</p>
<p>But a credit sale exposes a diamond seller to an enormous financial risk. Because diamonds are portable, universally valuable and virtually untraceable, a would-be purchaser on credit could easily abscond with a cache of diamonds. Even if a thief skipped town, leaving assets behind that a jilted seller could recover, those assets would pale in value to lost diamonds.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309741/original/file-20200113-103951-4kvh83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A diamond cutter displays a tool used to determine the angles of a large emerald cut diamond.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-NY-USA-DIAMOND-DISTRICT/18f69742ca9c44b9ac61610a4a79b0e4/30/0">AP Photo/Kathy Willens</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though credit sales impose some risk on sellers in every business, other industries can use the law to secure their sales of expensive items. Banks attach liens on cars or mortgages on homes, which enable those lenders to recover the secured items if payment is missed. Bonds are routinely administered when expensive products arrive in ports of entry. Sellers are even given assurances by intermediaries for credit card purchases. These legal devices give sellers and lenders the assurance that they can recover funds from a cheating or overextended purchaser.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">But none of these modern instruments are available to diamond sellers</a>, meaning that if a party were to cheat, there is no legal recourse. The law is of no use to diamond sellers, so they must operate outside the law.</p>
<h2>Your reputation is all your have</h2>
<p>If there’s no long arm of the law, what prevents theft and other forms of wrongdoing? </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/26/opinion/the-editorial-notebook-the-real-treasure-of-47th-street.html">a 1984 New York Times article</a>, diamantaires “trust each other not to walk away with the world’s most valuable, easily concealed commodity … They are protected from embezzling only by the character of those who transport.” The article concluded that mutual trust is “the real treasure” of the diamond industry.</p>
<p>A market defined by mutual trust is all well and good. But merchants know that blind trust is naive. They’re aware that the diamond industry – like all others – includes many Howard Ratners, and that trust only works when there are repercussions for bad behavior. </p>
<p>The true genius of the Diamond District, I discovered, is a reputation mechanism that rewards honest behavior and shuns merchants with a blemished record. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972179">two pillars that hold people accountable</a>.</p>
<p>First, the industry imposes economic sanctions on those who fail to uphold their financial obligations. A trade association publicizes to the entire industry the identities of anyone reported to have cheated, misallocated funds or exhibited any disreputable conduct. The formal mechanism is a bulletin board that – much like the “Wanted” posters in the Old West – displays pictures of individuals who haven’t paid their debts. Those whose faces appear on the wall are known to be in default and are shunned by the industry. Those who remain off the board and maintain an unblemished reputation are guaranteed a lifetime of lucrative business. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309743/original/file-20200113-103963-u01wio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Egyptian jeweler named Ramses Said has been working at his family’s Diamond District business since he was 14 years old.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/NYC-Daily-Life/45bb592a6aec49749bf524881450097a/57/0">AP Photo/Richard Drew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, families and communities police their own. Family businesses form the backbone of the industry, and reputations are bequeathed and inherited. Those who break the code of trust bring harm not only to their own reputation but also that of their family. The reputational stakes are high, since many plan to bequeath their lucrative businesses to their children. They’re also sources of employment for extended family and ethnic compatriots. Since families and communities have so much to gain by everyone behaving honorably, they bring shame and impose penalties to any of their own who cheat in the business.</p>
<p>The importance of business reputations explains why the industry has been able to sustain a pre-modern, pre-legal system. It allows old world commerce to outperform modern capitalism on its home turf – and the Diamond District is a reminder that family businesses and community enterprises still have a place in the 21st century.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barak Richman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Surrounded by skyscrapers and high-end boutiques, 47th Street continues to operate like an Old World bazaar, with million-dollar deals sealed by handshakes and insured by a family’s reputation.
Barak Richman, Katharine T. Bartlett Professor of Law, Duke University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/73133
2017-02-22T02:58:44Z
2017-02-22T02:58:44Z
Intrigue, lucky charms and painful longing: the art of Helen Britton
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157294/original/image-20170217-4254-13ym67l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Helen Britton in her studio in 2015.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Bielander</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is the week before the opening of her exhibition <a href="https://perthfestival.com.au/visual-arts/whats-on/events/interstices/">Interstices</a> at Perth’s Lawrence Wilson Gallery and Helen Britton kindly interrupts her schedule to talk about her art. Around us spreads the usual commotion of installation. While some works are already afixed to walls or strategically placed on the floor, the space is filled with trestles, boxes, bubble wrap, ladders and the <em>brrrp bursspp</em> of hand tools as the install crew carry on with their tasks. </p>
<p>On the table in front of us, Britton smoothes out a piece that might serve as an adornment for the body. With care, she deftly arks the ends of a composition of hand wrought metallic forms into a perfectly balanced oblong. She lifts another from a box.</p>
<p>“Quick, while no one is looking, feel this”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157293/original/image-20170217-32211-ycak4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helen Britton.
Dropbones, 2014
silver, paint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Helen Britton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Touch is a privilege seldom granted to most gallery visitors. Shivering, tinkling, tiny metal shapes glide between my fingers. They are the colour of a lichen-filled European forest on a wet day. Gunmetal gangrene pine needles dripping leaf mould fungus, a barely there weightless dream flight of imaginings; one touch and you are transported. It is beautiful.</p>
<p>What is it about objects in the material world that hold us in their thrall?</p>
<p>Perhaps, lurking in the bottom drawer of your credenza, or proudly displayed in a lounge room cabinet, you have a cache of trinkets, things that sociologist Daniel Miller <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7530950-stuff">refers to as “stuff”</a>; items of material culture that are imbued with social as well as personal meanings. </p>
<p>While for most of us, these objects may be a haphazard garnering of fancies mumbling with reveries, reminders of an irretrievable past, Britton has a more purposeful collection of touchstones that she calls “personal icons” from which her artistic inspiration derives. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157288/original/image-20170217-4269-1rbr0od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157288/original/image-20170217-4269-1rbr0od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157288/original/image-20170217-4269-1rbr0od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157288/original/image-20170217-4269-1rbr0od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157288/original/image-20170217-4269-1rbr0od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157288/original/image-20170217-4269-1rbr0od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157288/original/image-20170217-4269-1rbr0od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helen Britton with brooches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Copyright and courtesy of the artist. Photo concept, Helen Britton; styling, Corrina Brix; photo, Dirk Eisel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After studying fine art at Edith Cowan University and completing a Masters of Creative Arts by Research at Curtin University, Britton has developed an extensive international reputation as a jeweller and maker of exquisitely crafted objects that are inspired by the various cultures she encounters in the world around her.</p>
<p>Although her studio is now based in Germany, she still maintains close ties with, and returns often to, Western Australia where its landforms, bush and coastal environments provide not only solace for her soul but also a source of inspiration for her work. As a celebration of the depth and breadth of her 25 years of practice, Interstices is captivating.</p>
<p>In one darkened hall of the gallery, on a seemingly ramshackle grey scaffolding, two dark articulated forms - trained eels or eevilish trains - trundle along a looping circuit that in some places is raised above the viewer’s head.</p>
<p>On a nearby wall, caught in a blast of downlight glare, are a set of boldly painted drawings reminiscent of sideshow alley posters, of European folk art chapbooks, of places seething with uncertain pleasures. </p>
<p>On an adjacent wall glimmer oversized lucky charms, while in front sits a display case of intrigue-fuelled jewellery objects: a firey red, glistering tiny horse is encased in a metallic cage - has it been racing too fast on the track; three little iridescent bluebirds are nestled (or are they trapped?) in an uncomfortable metal bed while a devil-faced ring chuckles to itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157292/original/image-20170217-4276-al2l24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157292/original/image-20170217-4276-al2l24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157292/original/image-20170217-4276-al2l24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157292/original/image-20170217-4276-al2l24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157292/original/image-20170217-4276-al2l24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157292/original/image-20170217-4276-al2l24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157292/original/image-20170217-4276-al2l24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Devil, 2016,
silver, paint, 11 x 6 x 1.5 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Helen Britton. Copyright and courtesy of the artist.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The gallery is thrumming with thrill seeking….. and trepidation. Board the ghost train! Take a gamble! Try your luck! Get your show bags here! Helen Britton is playfully teasing you with <em>unheimlich</em> tonight.</p>
<p>In one space, Britton critiques the institutional hierarchies of conventional art practice by cavorting with the violence of the decorative. Large scale drawings, lusty ornaments for impersonal white cube walls, echo the rich intricacies of body adornments that fill display cases. </p>
<p>In another area, industrial chic meets dystopian worlds where a floor sculpture - perhaps a mad architect’s model for an industrialized building zone; or is it an upscaled rendition of one of her works for the body - becomes the plinth for an array of jewellery forms that resonate with the clamour of mechanised modern life.</p>
<p>Suspended from the structure’s rigging or sited on its raised platforms, there are numerous rings, bracelets and necklaces composed variously of perforated or incised small drums; minature sprocket-like shapes and a conglomeration of metallic forms forged together as though they might be whirring noisily on a never-ending conveyor belt. It’s clever, thought-provoking stuff that jolts us unexpectedly into a baroque swirl of meaning making.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157295/original/image-20170217-4254-o7u21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shell Necklace, 2011:</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Dirk Eisel. Copyright and courtesy of the artist.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However it is in the centre of the room where public and private iconographies collide. On a simple unvarnished wooden trestle table lie numerous threaded collections of shells, of fish bones, of sea shore findings that record Helen Britton’s journeys between the physical worlds of Western Australia and Germany and personal memories.</p>
<p>Here and there, the self and the other, time and space, commingle around these portals for nostalgic reverie. By nostalgia, I do not mean the sweet endearments of an imagined past that is fixed indelibly in time, though I suspect such sentimentality may be one aspect in Helen Britton’s compendium of meanings that are available for playful consideration.</p>
<p>Rather, I am thinking of social historian <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/85625375/the-senses-still-perception-and-memory-as-material">Nadia Serematakis</a>’s notion of a painful longing that is imbued in the sensual and sensate forms of material culture; a longing that imagines other futures. </p>
<p>Embedded in the materiality of everyday life, in the here and now of viewing, these objects touch us with their familiarity and by their associative meanings transport us elsewhere.</p>
<p>These are the interstices of Helen Britton’s art that transfix me.</p>
<p><em>Interstices is showing as part of the <a href="https://perthfestival.com.au/visual-arts/whats-on/events/interstices/">Perth International Arts Festival</a> until Sat 15 Apr 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Schilo was a former lecturer of Helen Britton when she studied at both Edith Cowan and Curtin universities in Western Australia. </span></em></p>
An internationally renowned jeweller, now based in Germany, Helen Britton is inspired by the landforms of Western Australia. A new exhibition of her work is captivating.
Ann Schilo, Senior Lecturer in Art, Curtin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60449
2016-06-13T20:09:01Z
2016-06-13T20:09:01Z
Emancipated wenches in gaudy jewellery: the liberating bling of the goldfields
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126016/original/image-20160610-5894-kf331b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An unknown portrait of Lola Montez as a young woman.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private Collection Print</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl.</p>
<p>But that’s not all she was. Not by a long stretch.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lola Montez.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lola Montez was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1818, and christened Maria Eliza Delores Rosanna Gilbert. She changed her name to Lola when, at 18, she fled an arranged betrothal to a reviled old man. The woman who had dined (and slept) with the kings of Europe, plotted against the Jesuit-controlled monarchy in Bavaria, given advice on matters of state to Czar Nicholas and Ludwig I, performed in the opera houses of Europe, married at least three times and travelled the globe with her infamous Spider Dance, died alone in a New York boarding house of syphilis, aged 42. Her gravestone simply reads “Mrs Eliza Gilbert”.</p>
<p>By the end of her short and explosive life, Lola might have suggested a better epitaph: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A woman of beauty and intelligence needs the quills of a porcupine as self-defence – or else risk ruin.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She made this assessment in the lecture tour of America she embarked upon after her colourful but calamitous theatrical tour of the Victorian goldfields in 1855-56.</p>
<p>It is this part of Lola’s globe-trotting journey that is celebrated in <a href="http://made.org/whats-on/bling/">Bling!</a>, a sparkling exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka in Ballarat. A life size figurine of Lola descends from the ceiling — like Mary Poppins in crinolines — of a circular room adjoining the cosy catacomb that houses the original Eureka flag. </p>
<p>If Lola’s ersatz feet were to touch the ground, she’d find herself surrounded by the most extraordinary collection of goldfields’ jewellery. Over 250 pieces of finely wrought gold, often depicting the tools of the trade that earned diggers the cache that allowed them to purchase such pieces of adornment, often for the first time in their lives. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unknown early NSW miners brooch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trevor Hancock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other brooches, earrings and hair clasps represent the fauna and flora of the colony that had welcomed them as penniless (and sometimes illiterate) immigrants and given them the opportunity to dress like queens.</p>
<p>These were challenging, topsy-turvy times.</p>
<h2>An upside down society</h2>
<p>Lola plummeted into the upside down society of goldrush Melbourne and hit the ground running. Like most entrepreneurs and show-offs, she banked on attracting attention. But whether Lola fully anticipated the amount of social opprobrium about to be heaped on her shoulders is unclear.</p>
<p>Reviewing the Melbourne performance of her autobiographical theatrical production, Lola Montez in Bavaria, Punch derided Lola for wearing her hair in short curls “like a barrister’s wig”. </p>
<p>“She can talk politics like a book”, the review continued, “and teach kings how to govern their people more easily than you and I could conjugate a French verb”. This was faint praise, and Lola was damned for her self-promotion and delusions of grandeur.</p>
<p>One of the most poignant and telling aspects of Lola’s story is her own need — despite the gold nuggets tossed at her on stage by adoring diggers — to set the record straight. In her lecture tour in 1858, Lola revealed that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A woman, like a man of true courage, instinctively prefers to face the public deeds of her life, rather than, by cowardly shifts, to skulk and hide away from her own historical presence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With the mass popular uprisings on the Ballarat goldfields in recent memory, the raven-haired democrat might have expected finally to have found a captive audience for her grand political designs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The early gold rush was also a golden era for rebellious women. Viennese violinist Miska Hauser toured Victoria at this time. In a letter dated 15 May 1855, Hauser described:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Emancipated wenches in unbecoming riding habits, and with smoking cigars in their mouths, appear on horseback, and crazy gentlemen … career madly after them and laugh delightedly if a flirtatious equestrienne in a spicy mood aims a mock smack at them with her riding crop.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A month later Hauser wrote that Victoria was “deafening”, “giddy” and “life here is like a Venetian carnival!”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You see all the dykes of civil order torn down … women who have long since forsaken the joys of family life and despised all regard for respectability are here hoisted to rank and wealth. Even young ladies who nevertheless claim to be well-reared and cultured, sit all day at the latter-day gambling tables, where every decent impulse disintegrates.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hauser had met Lola in San Francisco, and was not surprised to encounter her again in Victoria. He found “the beautiful good-for-nothing” stretched out in a room on a white ottoman, smoking cigars, surrounded by mountains of boxes and chests. She had Tarot cards laid out. Lola, reported Hauser, was very superstitious.</p>
<p>The social problem in Victoria wasn’t just with impulsive stage performers like Lola. Hauser attended a meeting in Melbourne that was convened to determine how “the ever-increasing fickleness of women could be most quickly and safely remedied … no-where in the world do husbands get such short shrift from their wives as here”. </p>
<p>One solution was to erect houses of correction for “undutiful and flighty wives” where women could be punished for “their wanton caprices and faithless intrigues”.</p>
<p>The architects of this plan clearly had short memories. Their confidence in detention facilities might have been eroded by the disquieting events of November 1854. </p>
<p>On 3 November, the Geelong Advertiser reported a “female revolt” at the Immigration Depot where the female portion of the inmates</p>
<blockquote>
<p>rebelled against the constituted authorities … [two or three] members of the fairer sex, inspired, doubtless, by too ardent a desire for liberty, scaled the fence round the buildings …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, the “remainder of ladies vigorously assaulted the unfortunate manager”.</p>
<p>Just over a year later, Clara Du Val, common law wife of Henry Seekamp, edited the Ballarat Times while her husband was on trial for sedition in the wake of the Eureka Stockade. On New Years’ Day 1855, she wrote this truly radical editorial:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What is this country else but Australia? Is it any more England than it is Ireland or Scotland, France or America, Italy or Germany? </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Outlandish displays of good fortune</h2>
<p>It wasn’t only women’s outrageous behaviour that drew criticism in gold rush Victoria. Commentators were apt to pass judgement on their appearance as well, particularly the nouveau riche penchant for outlandish displays of good fortune; for bling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A brooch with a figure of a miner holding a large nugget standing atop a washing pan filled with gold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Charles Rudston Read, public servant and author of <a href="https://archive.org/details/whatiheardsawan00readgoog">What I Heard, Saw, and Did at the Australian Gold Fields</a> (1853), remarked on Victorian women “liking flash dresses better than making butter and cheese”. After a visit to Ballarat, English sojourner Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye wrote </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not think the ladies of New York could out-dress some of the fashionables there. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was not a compliment. She went on to describe:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The most absurd caricature of a digger’s wife, spending up on items with which she has no acquaintance, gaudy, ostentatious, laughable. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>William Kelly, who wrote a book that compared gold rush Victoria and California, noted that Victorian women had “a passion for parasols” and were “addicted to flowers and corn-stalks” worn in their bonnets. </p>
<p>Kelly was particularly perplexed by how many women could be seen in public: women</p>
<blockquote>
<p>of the strong-minded class … striking but unattractive women jostled you on the flagways, elbowed you in the shops and rattled through the streets in carriages hired at a guinea an hour, arrayed in flaunting dresses of the most florid colours, composed of silks, sarcenets and brocaded satins. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For good measure, diggers’ wives also paraded “gaudy jewellery”. (The wives were often diggers themselves, it should be added.)</p>
<p>But Kelly saved his most derogatory description for a humble washerwoman, who was, alas, not humble at all. Here she was “dressed for the washing tub”. Her hair tied up in a knot and “fixed with a huge gold pin with a father-o’-pearl head”. </p>
<p>She wore a satin dress and apron, and clasped on her wrists “a pair of massive bracelets”. A heavy watch chain hung around her neck “stuffing a carved time piece into her virtuous bosom”. </p>
<p>The Bling! exhibition at M.A.D.E. has collected a dizzying array of the sort of adornments that this washerwoman — making a show of her newfound market power — could have commissioned or acquired. </p>
<p>It was not only the miners who wanted to wear their pride in their freshly minted wealth on their sleeves – and fingers, wrists, necks and bosoms. </p>
<p>One of my favourite pieces in the exhibition is a brooch made in 1855 by Geelong jeweller William Paterson. It depicts a perky, cartoonish kangaroo sheltering among huge, curling fern fronds. The metal is hard but all the lines are soft, welcoming. The iconography of place mirrors the innovation of the piece: naive, exotic, precious, beloved.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No petticoat revolution</h2>
<p>So did the boundary-pushing Lola reap the professional rewards of being in the right place at the right time?</p>
<p>Not by her own reckoning she didn’t. There is the famous incident of Lola horsewhipping Henry Seekamp after he gave her a bad review for her performance at the Victoria Theatre. This encounter is routinely re-enacted for school groups and Chinese tourists at Sovereign Hill (though not the coda of the exchange, when Seekamp gave Lola a black eye). </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lola towards the end of her life.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then there was the night Lola lost her temper with heckling miners at Castlemaine. From the stage she shouted at them that “she was a rich as any man in the room. She was the maker of her own fortune and she would recommend the man who had hissed her, to go to school, and learn not to hiss what he did not understand”.</p>
<p>So why might Lola have been showered with gold nuggets but also bombarded with vitriol?</p>
<p>It has often been noted that in times of deep cultural crisis — times of giddy change — attitudes about sex and gender become more dynamically held or contested. The early gold rush in Victoria was such a time. Just as the European revolutions of 1848 transformed political hierarchies, so too the social turbulence and popular unrest in goldrush Victoria challenged gendered power structures.</p>
<p>Imperial anxieties about the state of social flux in the colonies in general, and about the presumptuous, defiant behaviour of women in particular, were expressed by politicians, newspaper editors and dancehall racketeers. Popular goldfields entertainer Charles Thatcher sang that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The gals that come out to Australia to roam <br>
Have much higher notions than when they’re at home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With a prominent libertarian and democrat like Lola so effectively vilified, the public/political sphere could continue to be constructed as a place of respectability and conservatism.</p>
<p>The show might go on, but there would be no petticoat revolution here.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of a public lecture delivered by Clare Wright at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka as part of the public programs for Bling!</em></p>
<p><em>Bling! is on at M.A.D.E. until 4 July.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
The early goldrush was a topsy-turvy time for rebellious women, such as the globetrotting dancer Lola Montez. An exhibition showcasing goldfields jewellery spotlights this era when penniless immigrants could dress like queens.
Clare Wright, Associate Professor in History, La Trobe University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49726
2015-12-22T11:08:37Z
2015-12-22T11:08:37Z
From blood diamonds to dirty gold: how to buy gold less tainted by mercury
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102909/original/image-20151123-18255-15hsbsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A speck of gold from a mine in Liberia, Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dw-akademie-africa/6719515309/in/album-72157628924113415/">dw-akademie-africa</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a customer walks into a jewelry store, weddings or special occasions are usually front of mind. Rarely does that customer think of where the jewelry comes from, let alone its social and environmental costs. </p>
<p>The tragedy of <a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/business-and-human-rights/oil-gas-and-mining-industries/conflict-diamonds">“blood diamonds”</a> – illegally traded diamonds used to fund conflicts in Africa – has managed to permeate consumer consciousness and <a href="http://www.kimberleyprocess.com/">generate change</a>, yet most consumers have little idea of where their gold jewelry comes from or how it’s produced.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.artisanalgold.org/publications/articles/world-artisanal-gold-production">Around 20% of the gold</a> in a jewelry store comes from artisanal and small-scale gold mining. And this sector is now the <a href="http://www.unep.org/PDF/PressReleases/GlobalMercuryAssessment2013.pdf">leading source of man-made mercury pollution in the world</a>, emitting 727 metric tons of mercury into the environment in 2013, more than twice the amount in 2005.</p>
<p><a href="http://www2.epa.gov/mercury/health-effects-exposures-mercury">Mercury is a potent neurotoxin</a> that harms the brains, muscles and vital organs of adults and especially children. While most people now know about the threat from <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mercury-level-in-your-tuna-is-getting-higher-37147">mercury in their tuna</a>, few know of its connection to the jewelry on the hand lifting their fork. </p>
<p>Restoring luster to the jewelry industry requires understanding what made it tarnish. A journey to the remote mountains, deserts and rainforests housing the world’s gold deposits reveals the story of desperate subsistence miners relying on mercury to make ends meet.</p>
<h2>Mercury in gold mining</h2>
<p>The artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector comprises 15-30 million men, women and children in <a href="http://www.mercurywatch.org/">over 60 developing countries</a> using rudimentary tools to mine small volumes of gold. </p>
<p>In researching ethics and global businesses, I’ve dug into how artisanal gold is produced and traded using reports from <a href="http://www.unep.org/chemicalsandwaste/Metals/GlobalMercuryPartnership/ArtisanalandSmall-ScaleGoldMining/tabid/3526/Default.aspx">intergovernmental organizations</a>, <a href="http://www.artisanalgold.org/">nongovernmental organizations</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272568475_Private_and_civil_society_governors_of_mercury_pollution_from_artisanal_and_small-scale_gold_mining_A_network_analytic_approach">academics</a>, as well as my own interviews with <a href="http://www.fairjewelry.org/about-us/">activists and industry representatives</a>. </p>
<p>Mining often occurs informally, meaning that miners forego acquiring permits to work whatever land they can find, be that land owned by large-scale multinational mining firms or ecologically sensitive land protected by the government. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/38hbwakHwKY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Once miners dig up a portion of promising earth from mountainsides or riverbeds, they grind it, mix it with water and then pour pure or elemental <a href="http://www.worstpolluted.org/projects_reports/display/87">mercury</a> on top, which binds to the gold in the earth thanks to the chemical attraction between the two elements. This divides the slurry into balls of a mercury-gold amalgam and a soup of muddy mercury-laced wastewater called “tailings.” </p>
<p>The tailings are dumped into local waterways, where the mercury is ingested by microorganisms and accumulates up aquatic food chains to end up in fish like tuna. Meanwhile, the mercury-gold amalgam balls are burned with blowtorches or on kitchen stovetops, a process which vaporizes the mercury into the atmosphere, leaving behind a semipure, sellable piece of gold.</p>
<p>Miners use mercury because it is the cheapest, easiest and fastest way to mine gold, and because they are unaware of its risks or ways of avoiding them. </p>
<p>Miners buy mercury from local black market dealers and many have no way of knowing that the invisible, odorless mercury vapor toxin is the source of their health problems, since it causes symptoms similar to other local ailments, such as malaria and STDs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102910/original/image-20151123-18246-1a8rxwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children digging earth for gold in Liberia in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dw-akademie-africa/6719514747/in/album-72157628924113415/">dw-akademie-africa</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some miners, such as the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/globalhealth-july-dec11-peru_12-27/">Aurelsa cooperative in Peru</a>, have managed to save enough money to upgrade to the cyanide leaching technique used by large-scale mining firms, which as the recent <a href="http://time.com/3991302/colorado-waste-water-spill/">Colorado mining disaster</a> shows, carries its own suite of hazards. </p>
<p>But the experience of miners in places like <a href="http://www.unep.org/hazardoussubstances/Portals/9/Mercury/Documents/ASGM/Formalization_ARM/Case%20Study%20Tanzania%20June%202012.pdf">Tanzania</a>, <a href="http://www.unep.org/chemicalsandwaste/Portals/9/Mercury/Documents/ASGM/Formalization_ARM/Case%20Studies%20Mongolia%20June%202012.pdf">Mongolia</a> and <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/extracting-gold-mercury-exacts-lethal-toll/">Indonesia</a> is more typical: families toil for generations without breaking above the poverty line or transitioning to safer livelihoods. Children often skip school to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/08/28/tanzania-hazardous-life-child-gold-miners">help their families mine</a>, only to fall sick and never return. With no education, their only option is to continue the cycle of mining and poverty as adults.</p>
<h2>A top-heavy value chain</h2>
<p>With an everyday commodity like coffee, it’s understandable why producers don’t make much. There’s little scarcity in the natural world, and consumers purchase it everyday with little fanfare. But luxury goods are very different. Gold wedding rings are (theoretically…) once-in-a-lifetime purchases steeped in sentimental meaning. People do research and save for years in order to buy a ring that matches their preferences. </p>
<p>My own research shows that the price for an 18 karat gold wedding ring of average size and width can vary from about <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Womens-Yellow-Comfort-Plain-Wedding/dp/B001AEJVNW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449160939&sr=8-1&keywords=18k+yellow+gold+wedding+ring">US$200 at Amazon.com</a> to about <a href="http://www.tiffany.com/jewelry/rings/lucida-band-ring-GRP00364/lucida-band-ring-14765514?trackpdp=bg&fromgrid=1&fromcid=288152&search=0&search_params=p+1-n+10000-c+288152-s+5-r+-t+-ni+1-x+-lr+-hr+-ri+-mi+-pp+1841.6+6&origin=browse&searchkeyword=&prolookupsearchadd=&prolookupsearchwn=&prolookupsearchradio=&prolookupsearchcheck=">$800 at Tiffany & Co.</a> A typical price is around <a href="http://www.costofwedding.com/index.cfm/action/search.weddingcost/zipcode/00000/?sg_sessionid=1449163605_56607b55bf7e88.01564089&__sgtarget=-1&__sgbrwsrid=d62a3c3861892cc7c0864dd3f8edd956#sgbody-2438529">$500</a>. </p>
<p>The value of the gold in a ring is set daily by the <a href="http://www.lbma.org.uk/pricing-and-statistics">London Bullion Market Association</a>. When miners sell their gold into the value chain, large-scale firms earn about 98% of this value, while artisanal miners earn <a href="http://www.fairgold.org/q-a/">at most 70%</a>. This amounts to $74 for a typical $500 wedding ring and an average annual income hovering near or well below the <a href="http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,contentMDK:22510787%7EpagePK:64165401%7EpiPK:64165026%7EtheSitePK:469382,00.html">World Bank’s measures</a> for extreme and moderate poverty ($1.25 to $2.50 per day). Without the money to send children to school and invest in cleaner technology, the mercury problem will persist.</p>
<p>So where is the rest of the $500 going? While this varies, my interviews with jewelry store owners in the <a href="http://www.reflectivejewelry.com/">US</a>, <a href="http://www.valeriojewellery.com/">UK</a> and <a href="http://www.studio1098customjewellery.com/">Canada</a> suggest that over 75% of the customer’s dollars go to the last two links in the value chain – the wholesaler and the retailer. </p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/UiDMt/2/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The first three links – the traders who buy gold from artisanal mines, the <a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/precious-goods_switzerland--the-world-s-gold-hub/33706126">mostly Swiss</a> refineries who purify it, and the manufacturers who alloy it into jewelry inputs – collectively take only 7% of the $500. Compared to the roughly 15% that goes to the miner, it’s easy to see why some actors are enjoying market power, while others are relying on toxins to survive.</p>
<h2>Fair trade for gold</h2>
<p>Until very recently, jewelry consumers were blind to where their money went and whether it supported mercury pollution. Today, however, they can choose to see. Two new value chain certification and labeling programs provide consumers with full knowledge of how and where their gold was produced.</p>
<p>In 2011, <a href="http://www.fairtrade.net/">Fairtrade International</a> expanded its focus from agricultural goods to minerals by partnering with the <a href="http://www.responsiblemines.org/en">Alliance for Responsible Mining</a> to bring the first ethical artisanal gold to market. In 2013, the organizations split and now offer competing programs.</p>
<p>Both programs require miners to acquire permits, use a mercury-reducing device called a retort, and ban children from the mining site. In return, both pay miners 95% of the international gold price plus a social premium miners invest in their communities. Gold sourced in this way that is also fully traceable may bear the program’s label. And both programs offer a semi-traceable, non-labeled option for businesses wanting to mix certified with noncertified gold. </p>
<p>Where the programs differ is in their approach to driving demand and thus benefits to miners. <a href="http://www.fairgold.org/">Fairtrade</a> pays miners a social premium of $2,000 per kilogram, whereas the <a href="http://www.fairmined.org/">Alliance</a> pays them $4,000. </p>
<p>Fairtrade’s approach of keeping premiums and therefore jewelry prices low may help drive sales, as may their policy of waiving licensing fees for small businesses. The Alliance’s model gives more money to miners upfront, and hopes to offset any lower sales by allowing large businesses to donate to the Alliance instead of sourcing gold from certified mines. </p>
<p>Which organization’s approach will result in better poverty and pollution outcomes is an open question. Until we get more money to miners and other subsistence producers, pollution problems will continue. </p>
<p>Currently <a href="http://www.worstpolluted.org/">one in seven people</a> in developing countries die of toxic pollution each year, and <a href="http://www.worstpolluted.org/projects_reports/display/129">19 million</a> are at risk of mercury associated harm worldwide. This is a horrible price for luxury that the world can’t afford to pay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristin Sippl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Shopping for a gold ring? New guidelines seek to be the rough equivalent of Fair Trade for small-scale gold mining.
Kristin Sippl, Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy, Boston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48381
2015-10-06T00:27:40Z
2015-10-06T00:27:40Z
A tale of two cities: two young Australian jewellers make their mark
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97157/original/image-20151005-29775-1toz8h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two exhibitions suggest a generational shift is taking place in Australian jewellery making. Lisa Furno, 2012 (detail), Mum's going away dress (material, silk cord, sterling silver).
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emma Furno</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two exciting jewellery exhibitions opened simultaneously last week, one in Sydney and one in Adelaide. These exhibitions involve two young Australian jewellers who make very different work, both conceptually and visually. </p>
<p>In her solo Sydney exhibition, Building Jewellery, <a href="http://courtesyoftheartist.com.au/blogs/articles/47037125-building-jewellery-by-jessamy-pollock">Jessamy Pollock</a> draws inspiration from Australian architecture, the built environment, and patterns that occur in nature, using aluminium and precious metals. </p>
<p>And in Adelaide <a href="http://www.lisafurno.com">Lisa Furno</a>, who crafts jewellery from rubbish and found objects, has for the first time acted as sole curator of a jewellery exhibition of works by New Zealand artists, titled <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Gray-Street-Workshop-173905315958607/timeline/">outbursts of unhinged imagination</a>.</p>
<p>The work of these two young jewellers represents a generational shift, marked by the increasing vernacularisation of Australian visual art, including jewellery. </p>
<p>In this context, vernacularisation means a rejection of clichéd Australianness - references to the bush and the beach, for example - and more direct engagement with aspects of urban and suburban living: art and design reflecting our everyday lives and domestic concerns. </p>
<p>Despite the two young artists’ very real differences of approach, and choice of media, the artistic <em>oeuvres</em> of both are imbued with this vernacular sensibility.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97213/original/image-20151005-1065-7b68fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jessamy Pollock (2015) Miniature World Series (anodised aluminium, sterling silver, blown glass, acrylic, rare earth magnets, inside dome structures).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pollock’s wearable sculptures reflect high levels of planning, control, and detailed attention to form and line. She makes refined works that reside comfortably within the fine art paradigm.</p>
<p>On the other hand, bowerbird-like, Lisa Furno uses junk and throwaway materials to create tongue-in-cheek, ironic work by melting down plastics and incorporating other collected detritus. Furno alchemically transforms these unprepossessing raw materials into colourful and flamboyant wearable collages that by some small miracle seem to transcend the fine art/popular culture divide. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97160/original/image-20151005-29734-12u36eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lisa Furno (2015) The squid has a Mexican moustache necklace (preloved plastics found objects and toys).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, Jessamy Pollock’s artwork deliberately references naturally occurring patterns and repetitions, such as the honeycomb, as well as the geometric designs in certain Australian architecture:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I began looking at Federation Square for aesthetic inspiration some years ago, which started me reading essays about the design philosophies behind buildings. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this she has been inspired by the work of Donald Bates, the lead designer of the Federation Square redesign, who has written about the underlying philosophy of his LAB Architecture Studio group’s practice in the following terms: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is our belief as architects that the social dimension of space lies in its ability to be materialised and conceptualised by means of new and evermore speculative spatial orderings. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97162/original/image-20151005-29780-12w7qa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jessamy Pollock at work making jewellery on the hydraulic press at the JamFactory, Adelaide.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bates et al’s architectural philosophy has profoundly influenced Jessamy Pollock’s jewellery practice. In her own words, she elaborates the basic principles underpinning her practice, as derived from that source, the first of which is that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every thing must have two purposes. This can mean in the broader sense that the building is both a shelter and a sculpture. In the case of jewellery, it needs to be wearable but also, away from the body, it must be a sculpture in its own right.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pollock’s wearable sculptures also bear witness to Australian urbanity and sub-urbanity, and to the interconnected world in which we now live. </p>
<p>Traditional notions of jewellery speak to hierarchical regimes within status-conscious societies, evoking powerful, heavily bejewelled personages. This sits uneasily with the resilient Australian self-image of egalitarianism. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96913/original/image-20151001-315-17ag3hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jessamy Pollock (2015) Miniature World Series Triangle Fold (gold, anodised aluminium, sterling silver, blown glass, acrylic, rare earth magnets, stainless steel pin).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photography by Grant Hancock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the idea that Australians universally eschew power, prestige, and status is nothing short of self-deception, we have sufficiently overcome our collective cultural cringe to appreciate the power of the vernacular in life and in art. This increasingly informs our developing tastes in visual art, including bodily adornment. </p>
<p>Many of Pollock’s clever, captivating brooches and other “wearable art” pieces are small-scale models of the unique, eccentric, crazy-shaped architecture of Melbourne’s Federation Square, each brooch taking its individual shape from the angle of observation from that precinct. </p>
<p>Not only does this involve conceptual prowess but Pollock’s body of work always evinces a high level of technical mastery. At the same time the design elements underpinning these wearable sculptures tap into what could be deemed a distinctively Australian social and architectural zeitgeist. </p>
<p>As the architect <a href="http://architectureau.com/articles/federation-square/">John Macarthur</a> writes about Federation Square: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To consider the merit of Federation Square is to consider how effectively this common space of the Public is tied up in the game of culture. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jessamy Pollock, also tied up in “the game of culture”, goes beyond designing and making exquisite maquette brooches and earrings featuring Federation Square. In her Sydney exhibition, Building Jewellery, she’s created an entire suite of wearable art housed within custom-made glass domes, itself a way of imagining Australian culture differently. At the same time each individual work that resides inside these little cultural hothouses is entirely legible as bodily adornment. </p>
<p>Lisa Furno’s modus operandi is entirely different, but no less connected to the time and place in which we find ourselves living.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97196/original/image-20151005-1032-1241ch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lisa Furno (2015) These trophy heads have funny accents, (brooches, plastic toys, pegs).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Furno’s mastery lies in her uncanny ability to transform rubbish, mainly plastics, into wearable objects. To quote the Australian poet <a href="http://allpoetry.com/poem/8521607-William-Street-by-Kenneth-Slessor">Kenneth Slessor</a> in an entirely different context: “You find this ugly, I find it lovely.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97161/original/image-20151005-29760-q61v3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lisa Furno in her studio in the Gray Street Workshop, Adelaide. First published Aspire South Australia Magazine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">photograph courtesy of Andre Castellucci.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Furno is the Recycling Queen of contemporary Australian jewellery. Through her practice she’s indirectly and lightheartedly referencing our collective social concerns about industrial waste, the environment, and the future of this place that we now share. </p>
<p>Furno explains her approach to the wild, oft-dramatic and hyperreal artworks that she creates, the antithesis of conventional jewellery, in the following way: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I take a playful, energetic and whimsical view to life and like to express this approach in my work. I construct my practice with care but don’t want the concepts to be too serious.</p>
<p>Being a relentless collector my studio is full of found objects from various jaunts to far way places that inspire me. Roaming the world is essential to the heath of my practice and allows me to glean the vibrancy of places, people and cultures. </p>
<p>Because I use “unconventional” materials, an observer might not straightaway guess that the “lovely” neckpiece they are looking at was once a dildo. Recently it appears that textiles are more frequently finding their way into my practice. Sneaky. </p>
<p>I have a great fondness for colour, repetition and movement and believe that jewellery should be enjoyed, lived, talked about and worn.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the cases of these young jewellers, both of whom have resided in NSW and SA at varying times, this vernacularisation of Australian jewellery is taking place without artistic recourse to the at-times clichéd imagery of yesteryear, and also without the slightest hint of nationalism. </p>
<p>Furno and Pollock are part of a creative succession, in part founded on the unselfconscious acknowledgement that we Australians are mostly city dwellers, or live in the ’burbs. No longer is it all about the bush and the beach, or the cultural practices of others who lived in distant places and times.</p>
<p>Both artists are “at home” in this place, and at this time in Australian history. Today, this also means being at home in the world, and knowledgeable about it. Their works speak eloquently to this. </p>
<p>It shows that there are commonalities in Australians’ experience of the built environment, and in our collective concern for environmental issues more generally. </p>
<p>This creative succession is evident through Pollock and Furno’s artworks, although no proselytising accompanies this: first and foremost, they are artists, not preachers.</p>
<p>Both young artists leave audiences wanting more.</p>
<p><em>Outbursts of unhinged imagination runs until Sunday 1st November 2015; Building Jewellery continues until Saturday 31st October.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48381/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Nicholls has received funding from ART SA to write about the work of Jessamy Pollock.</span></em></p>
Two new exhibitions from young Australian jewellers explore the contemporary urban environment from radically different perspectives.
Christine Judith Nicholls, Senior Lecturer in Australian Studies, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/28352
2014-06-23T13:09:16Z
2014-06-23T13:09:16Z
Butterflies, beetles and the fashion jewellery renaissance
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51926/original/k5kp72mj-1403520529.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">22ct Gold Jewel Beetle Brooch by Shaun Leane.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While jewellery and fashion have long been entwined, in the mid-1990s, both costume and fine jewellery lacked innovation. They were caught in a no man’s land of mass-produced chain-store brands, and failed to find a new direction during the recession. But this stagnancy has now dissipated, and <a href="http://showstudio.com/shop/exhibition/showcabinet_shaun_leane">a small exhibition at London’s Showstudio</a> provides one answer as to how and why this is the case. </p>
<p>Rising to fame in the mid-1990s through his dramatic collaborations with Alexander McQueen, <a href="http://www.shaunleane.com/">Shaun Leane</a> has been at the forefront of shifting the status of jewellery and arguably, its role within the fashion world. His jewellery’s impact is based on a delicate balance between seeming contradictions. It’s high fashion, yet formed from heirloom materials, such as gold and gemstones. It’s contemporary, yet imbued with a multitude of historical references. </p>
<p>Jewellery entered the world of luxury brands in the later 1990s, primarily through connecting more firmly to high fashion – for example with Marc Jacobs’ work at Louis Vuitton and Martin Margiela’s period at Hermes. There was a shift in interest towards artisanal skill, fine materials, apparent exclusivity, and significantly, fashion credibility. Investment pieces, whether Hermes bags, Louis Vuitton luggage or fine jewellery, regained their place in the echelons of high fashion. Accessories of all kinds became fashion leaders, while simultaneously asserting their status as heirlooms to treasure and keep. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51927/original/t278dd5p-1403520647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Damien Hirst Butterfly Painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Cuming Associates© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While some big name brands exploited this to the full, and tested the very notion of investment to the limit, others were more innovative and thoughtful in their approach to this new-found consumer interest in workmanship and longevity. Smaller labels emerged, including the <a href="http://www.shaunleane.com/house-of-shaun-leane/heritage/">House of Shaun Leane</a> in 1999. These labels relied on design integrity and a sharper sense of fashion credibility. </p>
<p>But it was with the turn of the millennium, and the rise of internet shopping, that these small labels really got their opportunity. Sites such as <a href="http://www.astleyclarke.com/">Astley Clarke</a>, which is dedicated to jewellery, and broader luxury fashion sites led by <a href="http://www.net-a-porter.com/">Net-a-Porter</a> realised that there was a gap in the market – women were now buying jewellery for themselves, and were happy to purchase online. </p>
<p>This major shift in the way jewellery was purchased brought much greater awareness, and crucially, access to fine jewellery. It prompted an equivalent of fashion diffusion lines to develop in jewellery – less expensive ranges by jewellers including Leane. </p>
<p>But this “fashion jewellery” is also incredibly artistic – and hence the exhibition. It’s not only <a href="https://theconversation.com/savage-beauty-the-catwalk-conquers-museums-as-fashion-becomes-ultimate-spectacle-26361">Alexander McQueen</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wedding-dress-from-queen-victoria-to-the-heights-of-fashion-26127">wedding dress</a> that are now considered to be art. </p>
<p>The current retrospective of Leane’s work at Showstudio is itself a tiny, jewel-like display. It draws you in, taking you from the creamy classicism of a smart London street, to view a glass-fronted wall of fierce, yet refined designs, each in its own contained area, as though on the shelf of a 17th century cabinet of curiosity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51929/original/265hzf7z-1403520837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51929/original/265hzf7z-1403520837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51929/original/265hzf7z-1403520837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51929/original/265hzf7z-1403520837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51929/original/265hzf7z-1403520837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51929/original/265hzf7z-1403520837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51929/original/265hzf7z-1403520837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fire Opal Butterfly brooch by Shaun Leane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SHOWstudio</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leane’s work is placed next to its inspirations, from a Damien Hirst butterfly painting, to a box of glistening green beetles. The show also displays eight bespoke pieces, specially made to convey the attention to detail and fine workmanship that defines the brand.</p>
<p>Leane’s work draws its main influences from nature – he is perhaps most widely known for his signature “<a href="http://www.shaunleane.com/shop/silver-collections/signature-tusk.html">Tusk</a>” collection, which, as the name implies, is based on curving horn-like forms that fit around the wrist in colourful, gold-tipped Art Deco style bangles, or fall from the ear in sharp metals. This collection makes clear his ability to shift easily from solid, strong shapes that speak to his love of antique jewellery, to more aggressive forms that make explicit the ways jewellery can become part of the wearer’s body, piercing through the earlobe. </p>
<p>This skill reflects Leane’s eclectic training. Having undergone the rigours of a Hatton Garden goldsmithing apprenticeship, he gradually segued into fashion jewellery through his work with his longtime friend, Alexander McQueen. It is this link between a patient, lengthy training in the Dickensian environment of a classical jewellery studio, and the fast-paced seasonal tread of catwalk jewellery that has given Leane his unique edge, and makes him central to jewellery’s shift into fashion’s sphere.</p>
<p>The exhibition draws you into his world and reminds you of jewellery’s twin impact – as something to feel on your body, and as a glimmering, visual feast for the onlooker. This combined intimacy and visual spectacle has made fine jewellery a crucial part of high fashion in recent years, and this is something that is no doubt set to continue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Arnold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
While jewellery and fashion have long been entwined, in the mid-1990s, both costume and fine jewellery lacked innovation. They were caught in a no man’s land of mass-produced chain-store brands, and failed…
Rebecca Arnold, Oak Foundation Lecturer in History of Dress and Textiles , Courtauld Institute of Art
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/23768
2014-03-31T03:30:18Z
2014-03-31T03:30:18Z
Review: CUSP – Designing into the Next Decade
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43800/original/gdj32mvc-1394680753.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Designers can work small to produce large impact.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist Anupama Kundoo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Designers today are impatient for their work to expand into a larger world. They are testing their expertise in complex and non-traditional fields such as finance, conflict, health and disease; growing confident in the capacity of design to bring not just commercial value, but cultural and human value to new domains. </p>
<p>That’s the context of <a href="http://cusp-design.com/">CUSP: Designing into the Next Decade</a> presented by <a href="http://www.object.com.au/">Object: Australian Design Centre</a> (where I’m chair of the board), an ambitious national touring exhibition that opened in Sydney at the <a href="http://www.casulapowerhouse.com/">Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre</a> last year. It is currently on show in Adelaide at the <a href="http://www.jamfactory.com.au/">Jam Factory</a> and will travel to five more galleries around Australia until August 2015. </p>
<p>In 2004, Canadian designer <a href="http://www.brucemaudesign.com/">Bruce Mau</a> steered us onto the first wave of “big design” (design with the ability to change the world) with the exhibition <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxiJjTwLR2o">Massive Change</a> commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery. In the first pages of the <a href="http://au.phaidon.com/store/general-non-fiction/massive-change-9780714844015/">accompanying book</a> Mau wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For most of us, design is invisible until it fails. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43797/original/nphn393y-1394680322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Florian</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Wouter Walmink</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mau could see that the world around us was fundamentally changing, and that the role of designers was not to design within a world, but to design the world itself. Suddenly we started looking at economies, medicine, electricity and communications infrastructures, even food networks as outcomes of massively complex but nonetheless designed systems.</p>
<p>Mau articulated the move within design cultures away from manufacturing objects to designing integrated processes, right at the same time that Detroit was losing its auto manufacturing industry, and only four years before the global financial crisis. </p>
<p>The moment of epochal change, from the industries of the modern century to the fluid information environments of the new age, were being charted and design was ready to step in. But if a world according to Mau is a designed one, how come it’s so broken? Perhaps Mau was right, we are noticing design everywhere because everything appears to be in need of fixing.</p>
<p>Design is learning how to navigate work and life beyond the rarified air of <a href="http://www.alessi.com/en/images/display/filename/%7Cimages%7Ccontent%7Cprojects%7C1877-17814_1.jpg/x/280/y/286.png">Alessi teapots</a>. </p>
<h2>Design for maximum impact</h2>
<p>CUSP is an exhibition of <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designers/">12 Australian designers</a> whose expertise range through a broad cross section, from architecture to jewelry, graphic information systems to fashion, sonic installations to interactive wall paper, indigenous inspiration to steampunk humour. </p>
<p>What holds this eclectic group of designers together in this intelligently curated and elegantly executed show, is their combined ambition to produce enormous effects from expansively considered small actions. In the <a href="http://cusp-design.com/about/essay-agent-provocateurs/">words</a> of the curator Danielle Robson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>each project reveals a concern for the wellbeing and progression of humanity.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43791/original/q69z3qqb-1394679398.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leah Heiss, Diabetes ring.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Taking the idea of working small to produce large impact, literally, jewelry designer <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designer/leah-heiss/">Leah Heiss</a> works at the intersection of jewelry and medicine. Her work is concerned with the stigma of medical prosthesis that signal impairment, and instead offers a range of jewelry that turns insulin injections for diabetes into a private act behind a fashion statement (a ring), putting the power of disclosure and treatment back in the hands of the wearer.</p>
<p>Interaction designer <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designer/george-khut/">George Khut</a> also tackles medicine but turns his attention to children who are undergoing serious and often painful medical procedures. His iPad interface uses the rhythms of the body to control the calming environment of the screen giving the young patient a sense of control and reducing pre-procedure anxiety.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43787/original/h798x955-1394678584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen Mushin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The drawings of ecological industrial designer <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designer/stephen-mushin/">Stephen Mushin</a> are perhaps the most “boundary crossing” contributions to the exhibition. His improbable bio-organic machines are well-researched feasible fantasies, and while they employ a sense of the extravagance they have also lead to working prototypes for human-powered aquaponic systems for growing food in developing countries.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43792/original/4q9bxng4-1394679639.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Greg More, Make Change, 2010, data visualisation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of OOM Creative.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Data visualisation expert <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designer/greg-more/">Greg Moore</a>’s self-described data poetry, and artist <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designer/mari-velonaki/">Mari Veloniki</a>’s robot inspired responsive wall paper, while radically different, take technology out of our comfort zone and create platforms for information exchange, that might best be described as prototypes for experiential information systems.</p>
<p>CUSP articulates the optimism and potential of designing for change rather than products. </p>
<p>What is most surprising is the playful curiosity and thoughtful lightness of the exhibition, avoiding the sombre moralising that might be expected with such weighty rhetoric. </p>
<p>From game designer <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designer/floyd-mueller/">Floyd Mueller</a>’s work that literally requires play to sonic art collective <a href="http://cusp-design.com/designer/super-critical-mass/">Super Critical Mass</a> and their participatory soundscapes; the curator and exhibitors have worked out well in advance that to bring the rest of us into this next decade, they will have to make us enjoy experiencing their work.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43795/original/5gr7bnyz-1394679913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Super Critical Mass, Vocal mass at Manchester Cathedral, Future Everything Festival, 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Joanna Krolicka</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The vision of <a href="http://www.object.com.au/">Object: The Australian Design Centre</a> is to explore the potential of design in our lives through showcasing and promoting the significant design expertise of Australian designers. </p>
<p>CUSP achieves this in spades, highlighting the talent of Australian design lurking somewhere between laboratories, server farms, fashion studios and greenhouses. </p>
<p>There is something altruistic at play here; critical and charged with purpose, anxious to exceed boundaries and eager to learn through collaboration with new partners in medicine, science and finance.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em><a href="http://cusp-design.com/">CUSP: Designing into the Next Decade</a> is at the <a href="http://www.jamfactory.com.au/">Jam Factory</a> in Adelaide until April 26.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23768/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Burke is Chair of the Board of Directors for Object: Australian Design Centre. </span></em></p>
Designers today are impatient for their work to expand into a larger world. They are testing their expertise in complex and non-traditional fields such as finance, conflict, health and disease; growing…
Anthony Burke, Head of the School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.