Johanna Dahm's new jewellery collection - featuring mainly rings - is intriguing in many ways. V i s u a l. Sculptural forms rest on the finger with a natural tension, like sacks of wheat or water carried to market on the head. Forms with the sensuality of overripe fruit with light, golden gloss.

T a c t i l e.
Constructed and modelled in wax around a core, the forms are cast in gold - complete with fingerprints and imperfections - begging to be touched and toyed with. Shaped with the fingers, their natural place is on the finger.

T e c h n i q u e.
these pieces have been cast using the lost-wax method. The space left by the melted wax model is filled with liquid gold. This process takes place in a clay shell, impervious and hidden from view. Whether the cast has succeeded is only evident when the clay mould is broken open.

C u l t u r a l.
For centuries, the goldsmiths of the Asante kings of Ghana have made jewellery this way. Jewellery with a traditional symbolism and ornamentation. Johanna Dahm was able to work with them for a while, learning their methods and using her idiom.

While none of the pieces she cast there were successful, back at her studio in Switzerland the same method produced excellent results and a new chapter in Johanna's oeuvre opened: Lost and Found.

Paul Derrez

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see also : Johanna Dahm | fast Ashanti