In Hermann Jünger’s exquisitely crafted Brooch, gold reveals a sensuous luminosity. Our eyes are drawn into a subtly gleaming landscape. It is a mysterious setting, punctuated here and there with small, raised markers. Jünger evokes the mnemonic qualities of fragments, such as those found in scraps of text, shards of pottery or architectural ruins, where a residual part embodies the promise of a larger whole. Here the gathering and arrangement of elements in their small field also suggests a three-dimensional drawing, where the hand has left a record, a trace of the act of making. Like good poetry, which the ancient philosopher Aristotle regarded as being finished when nothing could be added or removed without disturbing its essential unity, Jünger’s work is satisfyingly complete.

Hermann Jünger was one of the most significant artist goldsmiths of the twentieth century, inspiring several generations of jewellers through his work and teaching. EKB