![]() It’s so hot in a way because of the history it has. ‘Gold has a background, a power, all those crimes it has. ‘Every material has its identity and charm,’ he adds. It is a tension that Weckström carries through to his sculptures, which juxtapose a living material, such as bronze, against the smooth lines and generous volumes of the pieces themselves. One very easy way to do this is to combine the two materials, which creates a tension between each other, and that tension radiates an energy.’ ‘If it doesn’t radiate energy, it isn’t art. ![]() ‘It was very shocking for the jewellery business when I was combining acrylic and silver, because it’s a cheap material and an expensive metal, but it’s important when you do the very small sculptures that every piece radiates energy,’ he explains. ![]() Weckström’s training at the Finnish Goldsmith School in Helsinki instilled in him an undiscriminating love of material that went on to define his work, seen early on in jewellery designs that celebrated material purely for its own sake. The most famous piece, ‘Planetoid Valleys’ (1969), entered the annals of cultural history after Weckström was approached about creating a necklace for Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in Star Wars. The sculptural forms were faithfully derived from the landscape, ranging from the early gold jewellery created from nuggets found in Lapland (the northernmost region of Finland and the largest producer of gold in Europe) to the textured pieces in silver inspired by the icy Finnish winters. This offbeat aesthetic was formalised in Lapponia, the jewellery house he co-founded with goldsmith Pekka Anttila in the 1960s. Silver and gold, crumpled into asymmetrical square pendants or circling the neck in a sculptural swirl, are defined by a temptingly tactile materiality, appearing to undulate with the curves of the body. Eschewing a traditional jewellery aesthetic, his pieces took a playfully oversized approach to proportions. The jewellery he created in the 1960s figuratively interpreted the Finnish countryside, evoking the wildness of the weather – landscapes in silver and gold, as he has referred to them.
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