In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture

In the 1960s and 1970s, a generation of young Americans rejected the promise of prosperity and the suburban dream embraced by their parents. Furious about the war in Vietnam, fighting for civil rights at home, eagerly exploring the effects of psychedelic drugs, and discovering the delights of free love and the mystical teachings of easter n religions, thousands followed the advice to ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’, in doing so, they created an alternative blueprint to the mainstream, a counterculture that would go on to bring about lasting change, not just to American society.

For many American jewellers, these events and values found their way not least into the studio, as well as affecting how they lived, worked, and loved. Jewellers, like other studio craftspeople, rode the wave of popularity for the hand-made and authentic that was at the heart of the counterculture.

The works hold a mirror up as much to American history as they do Pop culture, addressing US warfare and sexual liberation and reflecting Native American and Afro American influences in their aesthetic and choice of materials.

They are counter-narratives that become public statements in the form of rings, bangles, brooches, and necklaces. In Flux is the story of how their jewellry contributed to the raucous, contradictory, and enthusiastic clamour for a new kind of society that made the 1960s and 1970s so extraordinary.