JEWELLERY IS MY LABORATORY

The new brooches made by Dutch jeweller Ruudt Peters are highly intriguing and dualistic. You immediately know, rationally, that they are vulnerable because of the swirling strings of glass and the small glass balls or retorts applied in intricate constructions. But psychologically they have quite the opposite effect: in all their beauty and self-willingness they seem immune and unassailable. Their titles contribute to this effect: Sefiroth, Aretz, Schemesh, Daath, Binah, Kether, Madim - strange names,  mysteries.

Ruudt Peters (1950) shares – it seems - a history with complicated names, a history which started in his mid career with the collection Ouroboros (1995), followed by Lapis (1997), Pneuma (2000), Iosis (2002) and Azoth (2004). Now Sefiroth has seen the light. There is a whole world behind these names, a world that can be discovered by use of alchemy and kabbalah, though not solely by these.  For Ruudt Peters mysticism proves to be a rich source, full of symbols, and meanings. Alchemy is a philosophy which moves between intuition and knowing, and Ruudt Peters takes us on a trip to recover its potentials but he doesn’t do this in an obvious way. Alchemy and mysticism have been sources of inspiration for many artists through the ages, from Middles Ages through Renaissance into modern times. Alchemy, and its related philosophies such as hermeneutics, Neo-Platonism and kabbalah, is all about the structuring of the world, about finding systems in nature and life by the use of symbols. For Ruudt Peters this is not The Truth but his reservoir, About Sefiroth he explains: “The names all come from kabbalah. There is a list with names and descriptions but I use it quite associatively, in an open-minded way, not dogmatic at all. It is more like a vehicle, something I use to express my ideas and emotions about life.”
The sefiroth tree is the tree of life, and the heart of the kabbalah. Together with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, it represents Gods creation of all higher and lower things. The tree of life is presented as a linear grid with spheres at the crossing points of the verticals, horizontals and diagonals. The circles, 10 or 11 in number, are the actual sefiroth or spheres, each sefiroth representing a recognizable aspect of God. This abstract grid is the basic structure of all brooches in Peters’ last collection. It is not an invention of the artist but it is taken directly from 17th century Jewish writings. Yet this is only the starting point, from here on Peters starts drawing, sketching, experimenting with materials and forms. Against the invented structure he puts the intuitional, emotional, artistic and personal gesture, destroying the perception of the tree of life.  It is clear that the resulting pieces can’t be understand by just explaining the names with the help of a kabbalah handbook. The forms and materials in which they are presented resist the grid underneath. It doesn’t apply for all Sefiroth brooches, there are some in which the grid is apparent and dominant in the composition. Yet, the strongest pieces appeal because of their chaotic and blurred appearance. Kether shows a tree of life wrapped in swirling strings of transparent glass, Elohim shows a whole tangle of threads, dripped in polyester and limonite, while Nogah is almost completely covered with a thick granular layer of agate grit mixed with polyester. There are brooches with funnel-like glass elements, with minerals and threads, there are drippings and other irregularities and there are references to sexuality, to the human body, and to laboratories. The tree of life which seems so important at first sight, moves to the background – explained in strict artistic terms, you could denominate the grid as the ground layer of a work of art. The artist builds his own world on top of it, while he isn’t afraid of touching notions like the supernatural, the spiritual and the religious.
Yet, the grid is not only a ground layer it is also a straitjacket that should be challenged. Peters’ resistance against the underlying structure might be explained from his own personal history as a jewellery maker. Peters calls himself “a child of the nineteen seventies”. He was educated in a period of absolute minimalism in art, design and jewellery: “The starting point was rationalism. A systematic way of working and minimalism were of vital importance. Gold and silver were denied, and even repudiated.” Today Ruudt Peters states that he is still in connection with this period in his artistic development. What he learned at that time determined the rest of his life.
What could this mean for his current work? The answer must be in this compelling structure of the tree of life; It’s true that he choose it himself but the wish to violate it is strong. As Peters states: “It is the good old antithesis between what’s allowed and what’s possible, between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, between ratio and emotion.” A conflict that has determined Dutch art, architecture and design since the days of De Stijl movement. Ruudt Peters: “The unconscious plays a very important role in the creation of each piece. Departing from the structure I can find new ways by doing and trying.” A piece like Ajna shows what he means. It is the result of a struggle, something went wrong and he covered the thing with polyester after which he threw it in the bag of the vacuum cleaner. This brooch is the most fierce one in the series because of the chaotic, dirty top layer which opposes general ideas of beauty.

In 1973, when still a student at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, Ruudt Peters made an inflatable suit out of transparent PVC foil. It was a statement, a comment on the discourse in jewellery in Holland those days. The first few years after graduating he made some small ‘conceptual’ jewellery pieces and than abandoned jewellery making completely. He couldn’t make jewellery in the dogmatic purist climate that dominated the Dutch jewellery scene of the nineteen seventies. And in the nineteen eighties, which saw the rise of textiles and soft, colourful materials, he didn’t feel at ease in jewellery as well. He began making sculptures, slowly to discover that religion and philosophy were the true driving forces in his work.
It were the Renaissance architect Francesco di Giorgio and especially the 18th century architect and graphic artist Giambattista Piranesi who showed him the way to a vocabulary of form. Apparently he needed this swift to let things go and so in 1983, after years of working as a sculptor, he made again some pieces of jewellery. They reflected his new interests: a series of plaster collars as an allusion to the pleats in the robes of classical Roman statues and formica bracelets with silk-screened images of (semi-?)Renaissance drawings of architectural capitals suggested that the arm was a column. At that time this kind of jewellery was not really appreciated in Holland which was still struggling with the new formalist dogma’s in the aftermath of the rebellious pioneer period of the late nineteen sixties. Ruudt Peters way of taking jewellery as a bearer of meaning, and his non formalism, were observed as highly questionable.
In 1986 he created five gilded bracelets which followed the contours of capitals, they were photographed by a professional photographer while worn on carefully chosen models – people who were important for the Dutch jewellery scene, such as a curator, a critic, and a museum director. This idea of dedicating a piece to a certain person was elaborated in the series of metal bowls entitled Dedicated To in 1988. Now, almost 20 years later, this series appears to occupy an interesting key position in the oeuvre of Ruudt Peters. First there is the choice for one basic form (in this case the bowl) which dominates the whole series, second there is the limitation to three different metals (brass, copper and steel) in order to discover its expressive and symbolic potentials, third there is the obvious use of symbols, and fourth there is the introduction of fragments of minerals. These features will show up in his work from now on, eventually steering towards the last Sefiroth series.
In 1991 Ruudt Peters presented his first coherent collection of jewellery Interno, with a small booklet involving an essay, images of objects and artists’ impressions of jewellery and models. Publications such as these were to become a very important means of communication for him, accompanying each new collection of jewellery. The silver Interno brooches are mostly inspired by (neo)classical buildings, such as Bramante’s Tempietto, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the dome of the Austrian Melk monastery. The brooches are quite classical, symmetrical constructions around a hole. This open place in the centre, attracts the eye. The inside of these open spaces are decorated, sometimes coloured or set with precious stones. The sawn out decorations are rather non-descript in  the sense that they do not directly refer to recognizable signs or symbols. In his next collection Passio (1992), consisting solely of pendants, the use of symbols became crucial. Some pieces, such as Machiavelli, Isis and Alexis are completely covered, overloaded with symbols of all kinds of origins – the meaning of which remains quite obscure, while the effect is heavily strong because of all hidden meanings presumed to be there. The titles refer to historical and biblical figures. Together with the forms of the pendants which somehow reminded of vessels for incence holders used in Roman Catholic ceremonies, these jewels had a fairly ritual and religious character. The ceremonial character was intensified by the installation in which they were shown in the gallery – each piece hidden in a sort of shroud of blue-purple gauze netting that hung from the ceiling to the ground. Today we cannot imagine the astonishment and hesitancy of the audience in 1992, confronted with this rather unconventional presentation of jewellery. Nobody had seen a thing like this before, and it took some courage to open the veils and to look inside, facing the jewel directly. Ruudt Peters had found a new way to present his jewellery, by asking commitment of the audience. A procedure that was also followed at the opening of his Interno show in Munich (1992), where the pieces were worn by men in black suits standing in line against the wall, and with the exhibition of his next Ouroboros jewellery (1995), pinned on the beams of Gallery Marzee high above the top of wobbly ladders (the ladder is a symbol used in alchemy and represents the reaching for the highest, the divine). After this rather disturbing installation, which had a contrary effect because it scared people in stead of attracting them, Peters discovered that the true value of an installation was that of providing the right place, or context, for his jewellery.
 
Starting with Ouroboros all series of jewellery were directly connected with alchemy, and the forms became rather undefined and asymmetrical while Peters’ preceding works were defined by a classical order. This shift is not only influenced by his interest in alchemy and philosophical questions but also by his travelling in Asia. In India, Nepal, Tibet, and Burma he was moved by the colourful and mysterious Buddhism and Hinduism which its manifold rituals, ceremonies and contemplations. Echo’s of this fascination can be found in his work since 1993 when he made his first journey to India. Notions such as demolition and construction, nature and culture, male and female, covering and unveiling are used to reflect upon the cycle of life, and death. In this period, Peters’ use of materials became more experimental and innovative. The rings from the Ouroboros series are constructed from two different parts, the one artificially made from silver, the other a raw mineral (culture versus nature), and the whole is covered with and protected by, a layer of paint which will slowly worn out when being worn (the influence of time). In this way the ring, which is actually not a normal ring but a construction that should be hold between the fingers, will show its hidden beauties only after time has passed and become more valuable for the wearer because it bears marks of time.
Lapis (1997) was inspired by a true alchemistic process, the search for the ‘philosophers’ stone’ (lapis philosophorum). The mysterious cause for this collection was a quote taken from an old alchemist text: “Grind the stone to a very fine powder and put it into the sharpest vinegar, and it will at once be dissolved into the philosophical water”. Peters started creating his own stones by grinding precious minerals and mixing the grit with liquid acrylic and then pouring this material into moulds taken from other minerals. It was a quest for the artist himself, who considered his former collection as too extreme. The following collections grew almost organically. After Lapis followed the virginal, uncanny Pneuma with its allusions to genetic manipulations, than the blood red Iosis which showed how Ruudt Peters was able to create his own layered artificial stones. A procedure which was elaborated in Azoth. Yet, while Iosis had a raw, fleshy and bloody anti-aesthetical character, Azoth was much more cultivated and balanced. All collections since 1995, showed an incredible daring attitude towards jewellery. Peters violated the unwritten rules of jewellery by deconstructing, destructing and uncovering precious materials. And in doing this he replaced old values by new values: time, dedication, and meaning. Meanwhile his visual symbolic language has no authoritative character, it leaves room for your own contemplations and associations. The titles play an important part in this, they act like a sign and show us the way to something higher which can’t be explained.
Since 1991 Ruudt Peters contribution to the international jewellery scene has been very influential because he broke with the formalistic canon and set out a new course, emphasizing the importance of meaning and context. Besides this Ruudt Peters has never lost his interest in sculpture. In several commissions he managed to integrate his symbolic language in art projects in public space, mostly in urban architecture. In 2003/2004 he realized a 300 metres- long orange coloured fence with a spiral pattern based on the double helix, the DNA structure, a form symbolic of life. The fence was commissioned by the municipality of Hoofddorp - a town near Schiphol airport – for a new suburban settlement. The artist describes the fence as a ‘growth sculpture’, meaning a sculpture which is not finished when placed in position and which will grow over time. It is embellished with clusters of white ceramic balls, the so-called enzymes, each one showing the first name of a new born baby in the district – some eight every year. These balls are placed each year by the inhabitants themselves during a festive and informal ceremony, contributing to the public spirit in the new neighbourhood.

Ruudt Peters is a versatile artist who is capable of changing size, materials and techniques without any trouble, as might be concluded from the following impressive list of works: sculpture, jewellery, metal objects (Gods, 1989), porcelain objects (Rubedo, 2001), monumental art projects in an architectural setting (1992, 1995, 1999), installations, a collection of liturgical silverware combined with red polyester for a church in Amsterdam (2006), and a fountain in front of the Jhieronymus Bosch Art Centre in Den Bosch (2007). This fertile artist is a successful teacher a the same time: first at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (1990-2000), and from 2004 till today as a Professor at Ädellab Metaldepartment Konstfack University of Arts and Crafts in Stockholm, while he runs his own private international summerschool Opere, since 2001. Yet jewellery is his ‘core bussiness’. In an interview that I had with him in the summer of 2002 he argued that he is first and foremost “a jewellery maker, not an artist. Starting and thinking as a jeweller I can work as an artist. Jewellery is my laboratory. I observe both my jewellery and my sculptural projects as subservient. I want people to carry my jewels and to charge them with their own meanings and personality. As an artist I feel very subservient to the architecture. I have respect for architecture and for the human body. I don’t want to deny the body as the place where my jewellery is worn.”
Jewellery is his laboratory, the place for contemplation and research, the place where ideas about the human body, about life, the microcosm and macrocosm join with the will to experiment and to discover new methods and techniques. The glass parts of the Sefiroth brooches are blown in an Amsterdam glass studio. He challenged the glass blower to do some real technical tour the forces, like the blowing of glass in a silver structure. While silver has a melting point at 950 degrees, glass melts at 1250 degrees. Peters: “So, actually it isn’t possible to realize. But I really wanted him to do it and he succeeded by heating from certain angles. This is what intrigues me: to do things that couldn’t be done actually. I really love to constantly try and push the borders of possibility.”

Liesbeth den Besten/Metalsmith/1 July 2007

All quotes, except when described differently, are taken from an interview with artist on June 5th 2007.