Jewellery in Context

This is an indispensable and enlightening text by one of the most renowned art historians and design theorists, about the work of the great Marjan Unger.

The Dutch art historian and jewellery expert Marjan Unger died back in 2018, at the age of seventy-two. Through her teaching and her myriad projects, exhibitions and publications, she in?uenced generations of jewellery artists and theorists in the applied disciplines. Yet one of her perhaps most enduring legacies is her doctoral thesis, Sieraad in Context, which she submitted in 2010.In her work, she endeavours to formulate a general de?nition of jewellery. Yet above all she also analyses to what extent jewellery is associated across the globe with different, sometimes contrary issues: in that all human fears but also desires have, in a sense, materialised around the world as objects of adornment.

About the Author

Marianne de Boer, born February 11, 1946. 1964-67: School of Applied Arts in Amsterdam, Industrial design department (not completed); 1968: Married to Gerard Unger. Works and publishes under the name Marjan Unger; 1974-87: Art history at the University of Amsterdam, specialising in modern art, fashion and textile design, architecture, industrial archaeology and art history of China and Japan. Lecturerships at the Amsterdam Fashion Academy, Academy of Visual Arts in Rotterdam and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam; 1980-89: Editor-in-Chief of Bijvoorbeeld, a Dutch design magazine; 1991-93 Director of Dutch Form; 1995-2006 Head of the Department of Free Design at the Sandberg Institute; 2002: Organisation of Zonder wrijving geen glans, exhibition about Dutch jewellery from the 20th century in the Central Museum in Utrecht; 2004: The book Het Nederlandse sieraad in de 20e eeuw published in Bussum; 2004-8: Editor-in-chief of Morf, design magazine.