German jewelry designer Bettina Speckner will be the seventh artist in residence at the Jewelry Center of the 92nd Street Y (92NY) in New York.
Speckner will work in the 92NY’s newly renovated Jewelry Center studios from Aug. 19 through Sept. 14. On Sept. 10, she will lead an all-day workshop, titled “Cold Connections: Turning Found Objects Into Treasures.”
Based in Munich, the designer has been exhibiting her work since 1995. Speckner’s pieces are in many private and public collections worldwide, including New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
She also has taught classes internationally—in such countries as France, Finland, Estonia, Australia, Japan, and the United States—and has received the prestigious Herbert Hoffmann Prize, as well as the Prize of the State of Bavaria and commendations for the Danner Prize.
Speckner’s first passion was painting, but she enrolled in a jewelry class while studying at the Academy of Fine Art in Munich, which she attended from 1984 to 1992.
“I was attracted to learning the craft because I was there as a career changer. At that time, there were only trained goldsmiths and master craftsmen in the class, so I had the very best teachers to learn how to realize my ideas,” Speckner tells JCK.
“Jewelry has, in my opinion, another, different level than painting—not only the three-dimensional work, but the connection to the body. A piece of jewelry can stand on its own, as an object, as an artifact, but when worn, it takes on another level of meaning.”
Speckner says she applied for the 92NY Jewelry Residency because she was intrigued by New York City. She also had another reason: her mother’s travels to New York decades ago.
“My mother went to the United States with the American Field Service to spend a year in a family when she was 16 years old, around 1950,” explains Speckner. “At that time, one traveled by boat. When it entered the New York harbor, she took pictures with her camera.”
Those out-of-focus photos told a story that Speckner wanted to explore with her art.
“These images show perfectly the mood she must have been in while facing such a far-away-from-home, unknown part of the world. How should you take a picture of something you have not yet experienced or even seen, but you already have an idea of it?
“For me, these pictures show much better the fears, expectations, desires she has [for] this foreign country and what time will bring than a bright and colored picture of the Statue of Liberty would ever show,” says Speckner. “I was so inspired by these pictures that I use photography ever since in my jewelry.”
She intends to create pieces involving photography during the 92NY residency, and also looks forward to walking in her mother’s footsteps.
“I want to track this down. Is it all just a romantic, nostalgic idea of mine? What does this city tell me today?” Speckner says.
“I started to do tintypes, wet collodion photography, one of the first photo techniques, found in the 1850. I used antique tintypes before in my pieces and got fascinated by these one-of-a-kind snapshots, stills from real life which are not repeatable or reproducible, like gemstones with small flaws or objects from nature. I know that it’s a very involved technique, but my goal is to make tintypes in New York.”
Speckner was selected for the New York residency by a distinguished jury including Ron Anderson and David Rees of Ten Thousand Things, Jody Hanson of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Jonathan Wahl, senior director of the 92NY Jewelry Center.
Top: Untitled brooch by Bettina Speckner, 2023, with antique tintypes, coral, silver, acrylic, and thread (photos courtesy of 92NY)
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