Annette Ferdinandsen

Annette Ferdinandsen

Annette Ferdinandsen trained as a sculptor at the Rhode Island School of Design and found jewellery while studying studio art, which is the most useful fact about her work. Her father and grandfather were both model makers for Danish sculptors, so casting and carving are a family inheritance.

Jewelry

The pieces are botanical and three-dimensional because they are made the way sculpture is made: hand-carved wax, then cast metal. Recurring motifs include the calla lily, the wishbone, the palm tree and the pineapple, usually in gold with coloured enamel. She launched the line around 2000 after years of casting work.

More Jewelry

She works from her own studio in New York's Hudson Valley and makes the pieces at the bench rather than sending them to a factory, which is why the output is small. The flowers are not decorative filler either; she designs against the Victorian language of flowers, a tradition traceable to an 1819 book by Louise Cortambert. She has said some of her early work went into the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, though the museum's own catalogue does not name her.

Our honest take

This is a working sculptor's jewellery, and the difference is visible in the round rather than in a flat photograph. Buy the enamel botanicals, which are the pieces where the technique and the symbolism line up. There are no awards to cite here and it does not matter.