The magic of jewelry
...I got a piece of jewelry from my German friend. She found it in a vintage boutique in Paris many years ago. It's an old piece of jewelry from the late 1930s. I feel like there's a kind of mutual dependency between me and my piece of jewelry. Because this piece of jewelry reminds me of my youth. When I wear the piece of jewelry, I feel closer to my friend - it kind of opens up an invisible connection between then and now, her and I. At the same time, I feel like the piece of jewelry needs me, it sometimes calls out to me when I forget to put it on. Jewelry wants to be worn - just like houses want to be lived in. ...The piece of jewelry may have belonged to an exciting Parisian woman in her 30s who went out into the vibrant nightlife. That's what the piece of jewelry is perhaps used to. Now it lives a less flamboyant life in Copenhagen... but every time I wear it, it's a good evening. It gives me good energy. So for me, is this piece of jewelry a reminder or perhaps an extension of my youth? That is the special magic of this piece of jewelry...
Kim Zoll has experienced over many years how jewelry can give rise to numerous stories about life's events and events of all kinds. A piece of jewelry can have a life story, be a personal keepsake that can offer fine memories and reminders. Stories about the special power or magic of jewelry are a kind of stories that we probably all know about in one way or another. A necklace that brings success in an exam, rock crystals that protect and enrich. In a material culture didactic perspective, the objects of magic; here the jewelry, are things that can mediate and create relationships between people. The magic of jewelry challenges ways of thinking, where the distinction between times, between people and things, between the living and the dead, between subject and object is challenged.
One can thus understand that the magic of a piece of jewelry arises, changes and disappears in historical and social processes between the individual and the collective, between the personal and the structural, in their changing social lives of the goldsmith, producer, buyer, giver and recipient. A consideration of the original, the genuine and the notion of human action - of the beginning and end of everything can seem to propagate itself in the materiality of a piece of jewelry - and through this we can perhaps discover some fundamental conditions about existence, which precisely the study of material culture didactics can teach us.
Kim Zoll talks about jewelry that has been inherited and passed down through generations. For example, this cocktail ring - A gold ring with amethyst, signed AOP, goldsmith Arne Oliver Pedersen (1934-1954), 8.5 gr. It has been on a long journey through time, from woman to woman, from gift to gift, before it lands at Zoll Antiques. Kim hears stories from his customers who tell of love gifts that have been hidden in drawers - symbols of love that either disappeared or passed away. But the jewelry still shines, twinkles and sparkles with all its magic and beauty - ready to be polished, wrapped, tied with a bow... in the hope of bringing magic into someone else's life.
Blog by Stine Fausing Thomasen @flairforfox
Sources: (source: Sjørslev, Otto, Bille+Flohr, Dreyer)
Zoll Antiques jewelry can be seen here under the jewelry category and on the hashtag #zollantiquesJEWELRY on Instagram.