If you follow art or surrealism, you’ve likely encountered the work of Meret Oppenheim. The artist may be most well-known for her iconic Object, or fur tea cup, which is exactly what it sounds like. As legend has it, the cup was inspired by a conversation had by Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso, and the photographer Dora Maar at a Paris café in 1936. But did you know Meret Oppenheim’s jewelry came before the fur tea cup, and in fact was the basis for the work?
The leading female surrealist started creating fur bracelets in the 1930s. She used brass tubing and real fur and wore them to all her fabulous surrealist gatherings, including at the cafe with Picasso and Maar. Why not craft a fur tea cup like the bracelet, they asked? And so she did.
Unsurprisingly, the bracelet looks extremely contemporary and could be worn today. In 1978, she would revisit the idea of fur jewels with a brass and fur ring to match the humble fur bracelet. Meret Oppenheim’s jewelry is particularly special because it also makes a bold statement about the role of women in society–the fur jewelry, in fact, was commentary on the idea of women as decorative objects in society.
Meret Oppenheim’s jewelry spans beyond the fur bracelet, too, however. She loved working with brass and created several interesting pieces, such as a delicate bone and lips collar or braided wristbands with bold brass tips prototyped in the 1930s.
But one of our favorite pieces of Meret Oppenheim jewelry is perhaps the most startling of all: the sugar cube ring. Designed in the 1930s, a real sugar cube is placed in a temporary setting and explores the role or man-made or organic; time in the essence of semi-permanent and permanent. For one, the wearer can actually eat the cube if they wish, replacing it whenever they want with a new one. Oppenheim would later comment on the design, “I love natural materials. But everything man makes is nature, even plastic, even the atomic bomb.”
Leave a Comment