This brooch is by the German designer Petra Waszak. Sadly, I have not been able to find much about Petra as a person. As well as being an artist and designer Petra is a psychologist and interested in understanding what is happening within an artist’s brain. The very basic and fundamental questions when an artist creates – ‘What causes the creative creation?’ To put it another way, what happens in the brain when a person looks at a work of art or listens to a piece of music – what makes it enjoyable, moving, thought provoking? Petra has collaborated with some of the most famous fashion houses in Europe: Dior, Chanel and Gucci. And her jewellery can be found in museums across the world, the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. And her jewellery is worn by politicians and celebrities including Liza Minelli and Angela Merkel.
My brooch was bought by my husband from the British Museum and its design is inspired by the Bauhaus Movement. Bauhaus was a German art school which ran from 1919 to 1933, founded by the architect Walter Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969).
Bauhaus is often associated with modernist architecture, but the influence of the school spread across all disciplines of design including jewellery. Rejecting previous decades of elaborate decoration, ornamentation and precious/semi-precious gemstones, Bauhaus jewellery designers emphasised the beauty of the materials moving away from the intrinsic value to the artistic merits of the design. One of the defining characteristics of Bauhaus jewellery is its use of geometric forms – circles, squares, triangles and spheres – these are the basic building blocks of the designs. Naum Slutzky born 28 February 1894 in Kyiv, Ukraine (died England 4 November 1965) trained as a goldsmith, and was part of the Bauhaus school. The V&A in London has one of his necklaces on show in their jewellery galleries.
Bauhaus closed in 1933 with the rise of the Nazi Party who labelled the work of the school ‘Degenerate Art’. Their ideals of function over form remain influential in terms of design and architecture. In September 2020, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced the New European Bauhaus initiative promoting sustainable, inclusive and beautiful solutions to everyday life.