Entelechie

Abstract

The applied arts must always defend themselves against prejudices that are brought to bear on them, on the one hand, due to the persistence of traditions and the retention of outmoded forms and, on the other, due to the Modernist approach to handling under the heading new at any price. If the applied arts do not defend themselves against those charges, they lag behind the fine arts. It would seem, especially in fields of design which are not primarily functional, that is, cannot be assigned to product design in the broadest sense of the term, that evaluation of works is shaped by those two extremes. Jewellery has a particularly hard time of it in this respect; it is, after all, an art that goes back to the beginnings of history.

A certain parallelism between developments that took place in the 1970s and those taking place now can be observed in the use of digital CAD and RP processing that, although it has been used for some years now, is nonetheless still new. In the early years, using CAD and RP probably entailed groping between finding a tentative approach and creating futurist fiction. One saw, on the one hand, rather crudely amorphous configurations that were distinguished by awkwardness rather than elegance. Others by contrast were informed by an aesthetic moulded by science-fiction films and comics. Forward-looking technology should produce forward-looking things. So it seemed entirely logical that this jewellery should look the way one imagines the future today ‒ with the formal language of an aesthetic regarded as modern. Now we are further along: we are finding forms and applications for the new technologies showing that their exponents move about in this digital world with poise and self-assurance, that their spatial-imagination capability has grown to encompass the new possibilities and that they are using this technology more often and making better use of it. CAD applications are

no longer indicated by manifestly futurist forms but rather by the sophisticated interlocking of forms that are possible with no other modelling technique. It is certain that a new formal language and a new idea of jewellery will develop from the use of digital technologies. The first steps have been taken. Nevertheless, an entire mountain made of goldsmithing boards and filing nails probably remains to be climbed and it will be a long time still before the traditionalists are silenced, which they will be only when it becomes apparent that new becomes old and does not stay the same.