intimesofwar.com

In the 50s and 60s, craft presentations became clichés, reassuringly nudging our sensitivities and helping to pacify the uncertainties of an atomic age. Scandinavian design then was hugely influential — with Sweden, along with most other Nordic countries, leading the world with its mutual commitment to modernism. This northern aesthetic was perhaps less influenced by science and technology than by discoveries on the part of individuals of the abstract beauties of nature. The work in this exhibition, however, was proof enough that such strategies no longer exist. As elsewhere, contemporary Swedish design in the 90s is fragmented with no one particular ideology or movement to steer the course. There were some Scandinavian traits, but largely the influences represented here were an amalgam of late-20th-century global culture.

One of the most interesting developments in studio jewellery in the 90s addresses the question of gender. Increasingly it seems that designs are now more androgynous. The work of Christer Jonsson and Lena Bergerstad Jonsson might be worn by either sex. They are husband and wife, but work quite separately making things independently and of entirely different genres. Comparing their activities I found myself unconsciously attributing masculine and feminine characteristics to their work. The severe, geometric, reductivist forms I took to be ‘his’ work, while the somewhat pretty, pictorial, mythological, fantasies belonged, I assumed to be ‘hers’, but the reverse was true. No doubt this response says more about me than it does about the Swedes. But checking things out later with the gallery staff I was assured that I was not alone with my sexist blunder!

This ambiguity over gender also hovered around Olle Oll’s fetishistic silversmithing. Long finger silver ring and shining, articulated, armoured, silver gloves wooed visitors away from less spectacular work. David Gill’s gallery window had been temporarily painted out but for a small frame of clear glass where a glittering pair of Oll’s calf-hugging silver boots were displayed, wickedly soliciting Chelsea pedestrians. Who, I wondered, might be lucky enough to own these sensational objects — Annie Lennox perhaps or David Bowie?

Tobias Martin is a thoughtful young silversmith whose work almost stole the show. With a series of sculptures entitled Letterbox, shoebox size, iron containers were pared down to essentials. With the exception of their pitted surfaces, these minimalist works were free of decoration, providing us with a direct experience of unblemished materials and reductivist form. These contemplative, grey pieces evoked a sensation of the sublime not dissimilar to the work of Richard Serra.

There were a number of post-modernist expressions in the exhibition, including Caroline Lindholm’s pomander bracelets with their aromatic substances, and Wolfgang Gessl’s cornucopian rings, blatantly and ornamentally heralding their maker’s liberty from northern restraint.

Earlier in his career, Gessl worked in the studio of Sigurd Persson. Born in 1914, Persson became the father figure of 20th-century Swedish silver jewellery. The great man had contributed one single piece to this exhibition — a torrid, bright red resin bracelet in the form of a tongue. Enough said!