Rachel Feinstein Reimagines a Jewellery Custom as Her Personal Architectural Fable
Quickly to be unveiled on the Jewish Museum, her one-of-a-kind take may hardly be described
as a hoop in any odd sense. Practically a foot tall, weighing greater than a pound, and precariously
pointy, her model is a complete wrist-bending world unto itself, with an intricately rendered fort set upon a considerably menacing knuckle-duster—all in gold-plated sterling silver. “I needed the piece to be an emblem of up to date marriage, which is an advanced two-way avenue,” she notes, ruminating on dueling narratives of matrimony as fight and blissful ending. Over espresso at her Manhattan dwelling (itself a dream world by the AD100 agency Studio Peregalli) she elaborates on her many reference factors, pivoting between Jungian evaluation, fertility, and Seventeenth-century folklore.
To understand the challenge, which additionally features a sequence of limited-edition rings at smaller scale on the market, the artist enlisted the assistance of her good friend and previous collaborator Ippolita Rostagno. The jeweler translated Feinstein’s mannequin, roughly rendered in Sculpey, then wax, into the ultimate product. “A part of the enjoyable was the evolution,” says Rostagno. “It grew to become increasingly more refined, increasingly more intricate.” For Feinstein, the outcomes marked a departure on many ranges. “I had by no means labored in treasured metals,” she notes, including that the exacting element purposefully deviates from the hand-hewn high quality of her sculpture follow.
However it all goes again to fairy tales. “Castles have all the time been in my work,” Feinstein displays, musing on their phallic power, common aura of awe, and layered symbolism as each palace and—to sure antsy princesses—jail. “I needed to adapt these concepts in an aggressively feminine method.”
