Artist
All started with Svenja`s decision to study art history, archeology and ethnology at the University in Munich. Art History because she loves especially modern painting and design. Archeology because she carried an inexplicable weird attraction for Greek ceramics, knowing that most of our ancient history can be reconstructed from found ceramic objects. At least, Ethnology because she always was fascinated by other cultures and people, habits, languages and since ever she spent most of her spare time travelling over 40 countries in the world.
“Jewelry is like a biography. A story that tells the world a bit of your life”
At the age of 30, while she was working in an art gallery in Düsseldorf, the chance to move to Brazil suddenly appeared! The plan was to stay for a couple of years, but – life is funny – she is still there. In Brazil she decided to work with clay, opened her own ceramic studio in a small town near Sao Paulo, and studied with well-known ceramists in the USA, Germany and Japan. The highlight of this successful career was selling her modern decorative porcelain pieces to the best design shops all over Brazil and exporting to Europe, Japan and the USA.
Svenja is a restless person, always looking for new challenges and this means changes.
Starting again is no problem for her. So, changing the raw material from clay to precious metals brought her to jewelry. A 4-month intensive jewelry making class at Studio Jewelers in New York had a decisive impact on the planning of her next career as a jewelry designer and maker.
”Jewelry is a very personal thing. You wear it on your body. Mostly on the parts of your body which are uncovered, like your ears and your hands” she says.“You make a statement, you define yourself, show your personality to the world. Your jewelry shows who you are, how you see yourself. Maybe it is also a question of age, getting wiser and more aware of what is important in life and who you are or who you want to be. This is why I love jewelry that shows who I am, my jewelry talks for me”.
”Jewelry is a very personal thing. You wear it on your body. Mostly on the parts of your body which are uncovered, like your ears and your hands” she says.
Silver is her favorite metal, it is shiny and changes over time but it can be cleaned and then it looks brand new. Svenja compares silver to people: “silver is shiny, oxidizes and you can polish and make it beautiful again. It is like people, sometimes we are down, but there is always something that brings us back to full power, light and positivity ”.
Svenja`s jewelry style is modern and highly influences by her European Nordic origin, never losing a feminine touch and always trying to tell a story.
What inspires her? Inspired by nature? Who is not attracted by nature? And this includes landscape, animals and plants. That’s why the Namibian Skeleton Coast, the gorillas in Ruanda and Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia and for sure being a volunteer in Zimbabwe working with lions maybe have been her most powerful impressions. “But as much as nature inspires, also people do” Svenja says.
“ I have tremendous respect for different cultures and strengths and growing personally often lies in seeing and living differences and not similarities.”
Seeing the world like this made her the person she is today.