Found Treasures : Hermann Junger and the Art of Jewelry

Hermann Junger is one of the world's most renowned and influential goldsmiths. In a career spanning five decades, his evocative and innovative work has revolutionized contemporary jewelry design. He ranks among the pioneers who have given jewelry a new status as an art form in its own right, and as a professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Art from 1972 to 1990, he has taught and inspired a new generation of younger designers. These striking full-colour photographs showcase both Junger's most recent pieces and a choice selection of his earlier work. Exhibited alongside are sketchess, collages and watercolours which capture the spontaneity of expression that so characterizes his work, together with a remarkable and eclectic collection of natural forms and found objects from which he has derived inspiration. Junger's extraordinary eye can discover beauty not only in the weathered surfaces of wood and stone, but in the shapes of discarded pieces of plastic and packaging. Through his imagination and craftsmanship, broken switches and circuit boards are transformed into gem-studded brooches, the colour and texture of a pebble inspires a series of striking pendants, and a twisted piece of scrap metal becomes a shimmering golden necklace. Produced in close collaboration with Junger himself, this book is not a monograph in the traditional sense, but a unique insight into the artistic process and this master jeweler's way of seeing, thinking and working.