Gijs Bakker (1942, Netherlands) 

Soccer Brooch
1988
Newspaper cutting, PVC, silver; ht. 7.5 in.

Gijs Bakker trained as a jewelry designer working with his wife, Emmy van Leersum, also a jeweler and an art theorist, until her death in 1984. They approached jewelry less as a fashion accessory and more as art and design. In 1993, together with Renny Ramakers, he presented his work at the Milan Furniture Fair and their success in this venue resulted in the founding of Droog Design, which took the design world by storm. Now working with their third generation of designers, Droog has become a household name and remains one of the innovative and avant-garde forces (albeit laced with considerable humor about utility) in the field. This brooch by Bakker is emblematic of Bakker's approach to materials, the body of the brooch is a newspaper cutting of a soccer player and the ball is replaced with a polished stone, nontraditional and traditional materials literally meeting head-on. His credo is equally provocative, "I dislike jewelry. I dislike ladies' jewelry. Jewelry shops depress me." But he does like something about jewelry, one being that "like clothes they are closest to our body and says something about the wearer."

Reference: For other works in this series see: Joris, Yvonne (ed.) Gijs Bakker and Jewelry, Stuttgart: Arnoldshe Press, 2005, pp 177-183.

Excellent original condition.