Jewelry as Object:
The Art Beyond Adornment

Have you ever taken off a piece of jewelry and admired it simply as an object? I do this all the time. Of course jewelry is meant to be worn, but as a designer, I’m just as fascinated by what happens when a piece leaves the body and becomes this little sculptural thing sitting in your hand, resting on an armoire or waiting in a ceramic dish for you to put it on again.

If I invited you over to my home for a cup of tea, I could walk you through all the nooks and crannies of each room and share the stories and personalities of nearly every object I own. It's wild that something that can’t eat or breathe can hold so much meaning and feeling. I really treasure every tchotchke, photograph, piece of jewelry and work of art as part of my storybook. Together, they serve as a kind of catalog of my life, chock full of memories and stories I’ve collected along the way.

Jewelry Is Something You Live With

Jewelry has always felt especially interesting to me because it occupies both worlds. It's an object, but it's also incredibly intimate. You hold it, touch it, wear it against your skin and sometimes absentmindedly play with it throughout the day. Eventually, a piece can become so familiar that you notice when it isn't there.

Then, at night, you take it off and it becomes an object again. Maybe it's sitting beside your bed, arranged with the rest of your rings or dropped into a handmade ceramic dish. You can admire the proportions, the way two metals meet, the finish on a surface or the little signs that prove you've actually been wearing it.

That life off the body matters to me almost as much as the life it has while you're wearing it.

Designing Jewelry From Every Angle

As a designer, I want something to look as beautiful on your armoire as it does on your body. That means I’m thinking about more than how a ring looks from straight above or how an earring appears when someone sees you from across the room. I'm interested in form, weight, proportion, texture and what happens when you turn a piece over in your hand.

I've always been drawn to tactile and interactive design, especially pieces that invite you to touch or move them. The Repetition Bangle and Iteration Earrings are great examples. The tubes playfully rotate as you wear them, and I find myself touching and rearranging them throughout the day.

They're intended for wear, absolutely, but they're also kinda extra beautiful when they're not on the body.

When Jewelry Becomes a Conversation

This idea became an especially important part of my thinking when I created Design Lab III: Objects. Rather than beginning with the question of what kind of jewelry I wanted to make, I found myself thinking more broadly about objects: how they feel in your hand, how their forms interact and how something wearable can also function almost like a tiny piece of sculpture.

That collection gave me permission to push further into something I had already been thinking about for years. Can jewelry be a piece of art, a conversation starter and something genuinely wearable at the same time? I absolutely believe it can.

I don't think those qualities need to compete with one another. A piece can be functional and strange, substantial and comfortable, precious and playful. Sometimes those tensions are exactly what make an object interesting.

The Stories Objects Carry

Then there's the meaning we add after the designer's work is finished. Perhaps the piece is a family heirloom, a gift from someone you love or jewelry that marks a particular chapter of your life. There can be an astonishing amount of history packed into a relatively small hunk of metal.

That's one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by objects in general. Their materials don't inherently contain our memories, but somehow we attach stories to them until the object and the memory become almost inseparable. A ring becomes your grandmother's ring. A necklace becomes the thing you wore during an important year of your life. Even the scratches and softened surfaces begin carrying information about where the piece has been.

The physical object stays relatively small while everything it represents can become enormous.

Perfect, Imperfect and Meant to Be Lived With

I don't need jewelry to remain pristine to think it's beautiful. In fact, I usually like it more once it has begun collecting evidence of a life. A surface changes. A finish softens. The piece becomes increasingly specific to the person wearing it.

So when your jewelry is resting at night, I hope you occasionally look at it as more than something waiting to complete tomorrow's outfit. It's a tiny object someone designed, formed and finished by hand, and then you took over from there. You gave it context, memories, wear and meaning. That's when an object really starts becoming yours.

How do you feel about jewelry simply as an object? I'd still love to hear what pieces in your own collection have become especially meaningful and why.

Here's to the little objects that carry big stories,
Colleen

© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.
Published: January 25, 2024
Updated: August 24, 2026