Barbara Schmidt is the new director of the Handwerk Gallery. The goldsmith knows 25 reasons why silver, shells or cords are good. And can be icebreakers.
There are many reasons to wear jewelry: as a good luck charm, like Esther’s little silver hand that her mother gave her when she was pregnant. Or as a sign of wealth, like the 49 one-carat necklace that a customer had made for his third wife. Barbara Schmidt put these two and 23 other motivations into stories and bound them into a book. In the introduction, right from the first sentences, she states: Jewelry is an “essential opportunity for communication.” Some jewelry creators even claim that jewelry is its own language, she writes, with which one can communicate transnationally and transculturally.