Contemporary Jewellery

There are a vast number of definitions that describe the phrase ‘contemporary jewellery’as one sentence cannot fully pinpoint the true meaning to contemporary jewellery. Below we look at the definitions of contemporary jewellery described by Kenneth Quickenden, the author of the Virtual Gallery of Contemporary Jewellery and Liesbeth den Besten, the author of the book, On Jewellery.

In Quickenden’s introduction to the papers in the Virtual Gallery, he gives his definition of Contemporary Jewellery. He states that this type of jewellery is considered contemporary, not only because of its creation in the time of now, but also because of its non-conventional nature and that it engages with a number of “contemporary, social, environmental, technical, artistic trends” and that there is a similarity between the definitions of art jewellery and contemporary jewellery due to this.

In den Besten’s book, On Jewellery, we read that contemporary jewellery has a very broad definition. In contrast to Quickenden’s definition, Den Besten  simply states that “contemporary jewellery indicates that it is made now and that it is ‘of our time’” and that the exact definition is “not very precise”. Den Besten also states in her book that Contemporary jewellery may be used as a form of artistic expression allowing an overlap between contemporary and art jewellery.