The Jewelry of Moments

Akiko Ban’s jewelry is the jewelry of moments, you might say. She is retrospective as she emerges from her five and a half years of incubation in Italy’s world of contemporary jewelry to open her own studio in Tokyo. This first solo exhibition in Japan includes both recent work and work from her very first class at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School (Florence, Italy), where as a young “Alchimist”, jewelry became her mode of expressing memories and dreams. The contemporary jewelry espoused by Akiko is more art than fashion and fashionable for its very personal art.

Each individual display floats as an island of memory, a moment in time manifested as metalwork. Alchimia First Year (1998-99) recalls her initial interest in line form as a first-year student, while Giampaolo Babetto’s Lectures (1999-2002) showcases broaches from her life-changing encounter with one of Italy’s foremost contemporary jewelry artists. From him she learned technique: how to smelt 18 karat gold such that it retains the vitality of the color of pure 24 karat, but the man also “showed her the meaning of contemporary jewelry” as she says, though what I heard behind her nervous voice was the sound of artistic passion yearning to break through the clouds. Is this what drives “Inner Passion” – rings in which all the detail is hidden against the skin and more powerful for it?

Ah, but in my reverie, I couldn’t help but be drawn to giovanni’s garden (2003), sculptures in miniature inspired by Kenji Miyazawa’s classic novel Night on the Galactic Railroad. The miniature, stark in its silver guise, recalls an innocent childhood desire to reach out to poor Giovanni, to “create a garden for the protagonist.”

In “Visible in Moments” Akiko Ban has captured her own moments – rough as young should be rough, beautiful as only young can be beautiful – in her jewelry to treasure and to be a treasure.