Archief

Ralph Bakker

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die Nachbarn

dissonant From the beginning of the nineteen-eighties - in reaction to the ‘Dutch Smooth and Shiny’ from the previous years, Dutch jewellery was distinguished by a sort of anti-esthetic: materials that were the antithesis of shiny and shimmering, that were imperfect, and forms that were anything but harmonic, symmetrical or geometrical.

Until 1990, Onno Boekhoudt taught his students to research their material, to torment it and re-work it until it broke up and fell apart. Under his successor Ruudt Peters, the educational program emphasised another facet of creation. The composition, the concept, or in other words the deeper meaning became the important focus point in the educational system. In this atmosphere Iris Eichenberg’s work could come into being, impress, and quickly lead to an increase in knitted jewellery, crocheted or made with other needle techniques. While Ralph Bakker was searching for beauty, his fellow jewellery designers could just ignore this – of course with the exception of such designers as Robert Smit, Philip Sajet, Annelies Planteijdt and Peggy Bannenberg.

During this period, in which Dutch ‘author’s jewellery’, as it were, re-discovered itself, Ralph Bakker worked steadfastly in a direction that decades earlier had been decreed as outdated and anachronistic; a direction that had been labelled as such by Emmy van Leersum and Gijs Bakker, the pioneers of Dutch jewellery design.

In contrast to the other Bakker, who in fact was a determining and guiding factor influencing Dutch jewellery design, Ralph Bakker has played a modest role. Where Gijs, in the second half of the sixties made a loud-voiced appeal to revamp the way of thinking concerning the use of materials, Ralph hammered, some thirty years later, in the privacy of his own workplace, a goldsmith’s dissonance. He is not a man of big words and many stories, he is the one who observes from the sidelines, the one who is not mainstream, not popular, but loved by those who can appreciate him. An analogy with the music that he loves so much pushes its way through here.

090201 necklace/bracelet1989 gold, silver, goldleaf, steel collection Goud, Zilver, Klokken Museum Schoonhoven

090203 ring 1989 gold, silver, enamel, ruby private collection

090204 necklace 1990 silver, goldleaf, shells collection Rijksmuseum Amsterdam gift Marjan and Gerard Unger

090205 ring 1990 gold, emerald private collection

090222 ear jewels 1996 gold, silver, niello, hematite private collection

090223 ear jewels 1996 gold, silver, enamel private collection

090224 ring 1998 silver, niello private collection

090225 ring 1997 gold, silver, mother-of-pearl private collection

090206 goblet 1990 brass, patina, goldleaf private collection

090208 ring 1993 gold, tourmaline private collection

090209 brooch 1991 gold, silver, enamel, carnelian collection Nederland/ CODA

090211 ear jewels 1995 silver, moonstone private collection

090227 ring 1999 silver, niello, Tahiti-pearl private collection

090228 ring 2002 gold, niello private collection

090229 ring 1997 gold, silver, niello, pearls private collection

090230 bracelet 1997 gold, silver, enamel collection museum Het Schielandshuis Rotterdam

090212 ring 1990 gold private collection

090213 ear jewels 1999 gold private collection

090214 ring 1991 gold, silver private collection

090216 ring 1995 gold

090232 bracelet 1997 gold, silver, opal private collection

090233 bracelet 1997 gold, silver private collection

090234 bracelet 1997 gold, silver, chrysoprase private collection

090236 necklace 1998 gold, silver, niello private collection

090217 ring 1991 silver, gold, niello, pearls private collection

090219 brooch 1994 silver, enamel, shell private collection

090220 ear jewels 1994 gold, silver, enamel private collection

090221 ear jewels 1994 gold, silver, enamel, pearls private collection

090237 necklace 2000 gold, silver, niello private collection

090238 necklace 2004 gold, silver, niello

090239 necklace 2001 gold, silver, enamel, silver coin private collection

090240 necklace 2001 gold, silver, enamel private collection