The Artistic Jewelry of England (the Second Half of the 20th — Beginning of the 21st Century)

Abstract

In the context of modern culture globalization, it is extremely important to study the specific features of regional creative schools of jewelry. The analysis of decorative arts, including jewelry and art objects, allows to investigate the processes of artistic integration, using the material as close as possible to the person, their body, the metaphysics of their world-view and attitude. Every national school of jewelry art, being a part of the European process, has its own unique history of development. The evolution of the English school of artistic jewelry is interesting by the fact that today it is one of the leaders of the international movement in the field of jewelry as a form of plastic arts. The school owns both general and private features of this unique region, separated from Europe and, at the same time, representing a part of its culture. The middle of the 20th century was the period of devel opment of the post-war English jewelry, when it was struggling with the traditional notion of jewelry as exclusively goldsmithery. In the 1960—1970s, there was the establishment of the English school of author’s jewelry art. Finally, at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, English artists-jewelers joined the international movement of “artistic jewelry” creation. The essence of this movement lies in the interpretation of jewelry as an independent field of plastic arts, functioning as art objects in the contextual field of a person.