Gijs Bakker and Jewelry

摘要

Explanatory notes-"pull-outs" in red-create a jumpy and discursive document and draw the reader all over the page. Not knowing the history of Dutch design makes the meandering narrative a little hard to follow. But there is a tantalizing reference to the severe design stereotype known as Dutch Smooth, and van Zijl made me want to learn more about the controversy over Calvinism and the humanism of Erasmus. The many footnotes suggest other ideas worth pursuing. A reference to Marjan Unger's survey of Dutch sieraad in the twentieth century discusses the transitional state of Dutch art education in the late 1960s. As innovative as Bakker, his classmates and his fellow student (and eventual wife) Emmy van Leersum, were, they didn't come out of nowhere. Their teacher Marinus Zivollo trained his students in classical craftsmanship, the value of which Bakker acknowledged only later in life. Yet surely it is this uncompromising foundation that contributed to the leadership of Dutch jewelry design in the 1970s and marks Bakker's designs early on, even as he endeavors "to seize control of the material and to force it into almost impossible forms."