2021 Catalogue Archive

Dutch artist Evert Nijland’s adornment navigates between the primal and sophisticated, historic and modern, luxe and quotidian, tangible and intellectual. He draws on diverse sources in his work – historical aesthetics and styles, especially the Baroque and Rococo, are translated into contemporary objects. Collaborating with other artisans, he fuses traditional methods with modern technologies and contrasts a wide range of material including glass, linen, and silver. Nijland is known for innovatively incorporating glass into his jewelry, often blowing glass directly into his silver forms as he does here with Necklace ‘Bubble.’ The pale blue bubbles seem to playfully float out of the necklace’s cage-like silver form, yet the placement and choice of materials creates inherent tension for the wearer. Nijland is a graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, earning his Bachelor’s degree from the Jewelry department in 1995 and his Master’s degree in Applied Arts from the institution’s Sandberg Institute. He has won countless international awards and lectured all over Europe and the United States. His work is included in private and public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Rijksmuseum, and the Victoria and Albert.