Clouds from Daria Edström

Jewellery, no matter how much you try to call it fragile and aquarellic, is usually strong, durable and rarely ephemeral. Metal has to withstand contact with the body, withstand the shocks of the environment; it is not some delicate flower that has emerged from under a fallen spring snow. But sometimes jewellery is built entirely on a foundation of emotions as fragile as snow, on memories and associations, on hunches and ephemeral vibrations. Sometimes there is not a gram of metal in the jewellery, but only epoxy resin, flattened to a film, turning into flower petals. Sometimes jewellery speaks of painting, or rather of the memory of painting, which is often even more fragile and intangible than trying to catch the vibrations of air or water with a brush. This is exactly what Joseph Mallord William Turner tried to do, whose golden clouds, mist on the water, boats merging with mist and water, cities merging with sky still envelop Tate Britain, draw you in and don’t let go, and that Impressionism, long before the Impressionists, still leaves an impression, no matter how far you go.

To Sweden, where Daria Edström attempts to translate that shimmer, that blue of the sky and gold of the clouds, onto the body, creating light, airy blossoms – like the rings of a flower/the ring for the hand – that are frightening in their fragility and vulnerability. The impression is so ephemeral and so strong, it cannot be left behind or shaken off for many years. The ring is like a splinter of those clouds and the shimmering landscape, a piece of art history, showing that always, whoever we are and however many years pass, we will always stop where the bridge emerges from the fog. Where the clouds descend into the sea.