Visual Arts, Architecture, and Design

"If I force my material, it doesn't respond. I have to let it go where it wants to go. I must forget about myself — and then something can happen"

"Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe is one of Sweden's most important 20th century silversmiths, celebrated since the early 1950s for her highly controlled jewellery and decorative objects," writes Barbara Mayer in the December 1998 issue of Arts and Antiques. "Her extraordinary work is both coolly elegant and a study in flawless care: "a breathtaking match of beauty to form and function."

We learn from Barbara Mayer's excellent article, that Vivianna was born in Malmo, Sweden, in 1927 and grew up on a remote island. Her father was the town planner; her mother, a sculptor who had studied with Carl Milles at the Swedish Academy of Fine Arts."My mother was a rebel," Torun says. "It's in my genes." So when she began her studies in 1945 at Stockholm's Academy of Indsustrial Arts with a child in tow, she was considered quite scandalous, but there was nothing out of place so far as Vivanna was concerned.

Determined not to make jewellery for women who kept their jewels in vaults for fear of being robbed, Vivianna began making "anti-status jewellery" in 1948. She used twisted silver wire embellished with crystals or stones and later created necklaces that fit a woman's body in previously unexplored ways: Her Mobile necklace (1959) included a lead crystal drop that was worn over the shoulder, not as such drops would typically be worn. Barbara Cartlidge, author of Twentieth Century Jewelry, called the necklace "a milestone in the history of modern jewellery." Another famous piece was a bracelet wristwatch; it had no numerals, only a hand to mark the seconds. Torun made it in 1962 for an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and it is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

"A piece of jewelry should be like a caress, not capture you, but follow your every movement and accompany you through life. That's why it should be timeless, it should reflect your uniqueness, regardless of your age, be it 17 or 70."

Billie Holiday, Ingrid Bergman, and Brigitte Bardot have worn her distinctive yet modestly priced jewellery. But the beautiful Torun was her own best model; photographs of her and her jewellery were featured by many publications, including the covers of French magazines. (see below.)

Ted Nierenberg, who founded Dansk in 1953, sensed in Vivianna a marvellous understanding of design. "I thought she had a whole new approach to silversmithing. I had no idea whether or not this would work with decorative objects, but I didn't see why it couldn't," Nierenberg recalls. His hunch was right. Two flatware patterns she designed for Dansk in the 1970s and '80s — Alpha and Vivianna — continue to be Dansk bestsellers.

"Her spoons are like a kiss in metal — the edges, the contours, the sensuous way they fit your fingers," Nierenberg says. "Pick up one of her knives, and it's the same. This woman understands how things make contact with the body."

Says Vivianna: "The moment I try to attain something in my head, I put a stick in my own creative wheel. If I force MY material, it doesn't respond. I have to let it go where it wants to go. I must forget about myself — and then something can happen."

A variant of her bracelet watch - one that does tell time - is marketed by Georg Jensen, for whom Torun has been designing since 1969. She first came in contact with Jensen in 1960, the year she won the prestigious Lunning Prize for design. The prize was established by Frederick Lunning, a Swedish promoter of modern design, who later became president of Georg Jensen in New York.

Recently, Georg Jensen hosted a traveling retrospective exhbibition of her work that was showcased in Georg Jensen stores the world over. The exhibition, entitled Beyond Time, featured jewelry from four distinctive periods:

• "Swedish Period Jewelry for Freedom" 1948-1956
• "French Period Sensual Body Sculptures" 1956-1968
• "German Period Shapes of Nature" 1968-1978
• "Indonesian Period Movement in Everything" 1978-1998

The touring exhibition was very successful. After its Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Munich shows, enthusiastically attended by Subud members, the general public, as well as the press and TV, Osanna Vaughan, editor of the German-based Subud Euronews website, asked Vivianna about the sculpture in the exhibit titled, The Spiral. It's a wonderful Subud story. (www.subudeuronews.com)

Marcus Bolt also interviewed Vivianna for Subud Voice. Here are some extracts :

MB: Vivianna, you have an enviable, international reputation as a ground-breaking silversmith with a unique place in the history of jewellery design, yet you always seem more enthusiastic about the small gold jewellery enterprise you helped set up in Indonesia, where you've lived and worked since 1978. Why is that?

VB-H: To answer that question I'll have to go back many years, I was 17 or 18 when I discovered that making jewellery was to be my mode of expression. After being apprenticed and finishing art school, I could find no work, so I started up on my own having my first exhibition when I was 21. Later I was awarded the American Lunning prize - given to innovative Scandinavian designers in their thirties and that's how I became established.

In 1966 I was opened in Subud and, at Bapak's suggestion, moved to Wolfsburg. A little later I was approached by Georg Jensen Silver of Copenhagen, one of the most famous silversmithies in the world, and given a contract to work for them exclusively.

After many ups and downs in life, continuing to work and innovate for the Georg Jensen Company, and after having lived in Germany for ten years, Bapak suggested I move to Indonesia, which I did in 1978.

It was there that I met Mansur Geiger again, who was now cutting black opals and mother of pearl shells for jewellers, and I suggested to him, 'why not make our own, simple jewellery line'?

MB: You mean in silver?

VB-H: Yes, that's how we started. I had already developed my own method of simple, elegant clasps, pins and settings that used no welding or soldering. So, with US$2000 Mansur set up a basic workshop, building a hut with a corrugated iron roof and walls and chicken wire windows.

We also built our own workbenches and constructed a wire pulling bench (that's to stretch the silver wire to the required profile) out of an old bicycle pedal-wheel and I managed to get the rest of the hand tools needed. Later we added a generator to supply electricity for polishing. We employed a goldsmith and young, local boys who demonstrated some skill with their hands and I taught them the craft. They have now grown up and, twenty years later are our Master silversmiths, teaching the craft to yet more young drop outs, or cousins and friends and so on.

We now have 22 people working there, all managed by Utami Geiger, Mansur's wife. Now we also work in Indonesian gold, mainly originating from Kalimantan, which we buy in Jakarta as nuggets. Our craftsmen then legate it and produce my jewellery for export. The project is like a small family community.

Mansur, Utami and myself have been trying to follow much of Bapak's advice about enterprises involving social work and SICA. It's a never ending learning process. The Kalimantan Kids Club was one of Mansur's ideas which we also sponsor.

MB: Did the Georg Jensen Company support you in this social project?

VB-H: Not at first in the seventies. The director feared we would create a factory with hundreds of workers and start to undersell the company!

So I knew then that I had to surrender the concept for the time being and just follow. And, little by little, like a delicate seed, the project grew. The gold comes in, is worked on and is sent straight out again to cover orders. We carry no stock, so there's little temptation. Of course, we are obliged to have controls, but there is no feeling of greed or heavy materialism. And we are one of the few small companies in Indonesia little affected by the present troubles and still exporting.

MB: I sawyour travelling exhibition 'Beyond Time. Themes by Torun' when it was in York in the UK and the gold pieces featured prominently, so I guess something changed at Georg Jensen?

V.B-H. Yes it did. In 1987, when a new director took over I approached him and he was delighted to include our gold jewellery in Georg Jensen's collection. They now truly support the enterprise and its social aims.

It's a miracle to me that this jewellery goes around the world and is worn by people of many cultures in over forty countries and that they are on display in the capital cities of Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas. In fact, just before the crisis in Indonesia we were working on a joint venture project with Georg Jensen, looking for a piece of land in Pamulang in order to build a small factory and housing for the craftsmen and their families with space for gardening and recreation — a sort of local cooperative partnership. But now is obviously not the right time. I have learned to surrender these things in my thirty three years of Subud!

MB: Do you ever talk about Subud and it's social aims?

V.B-H: Yes, very often. And the GJ catalogues describe many of my pieces in terms of the inner and the outer coming together.

With the travelling exhibition I am often interviewed on TV and in the press in the various countries I visit. I don't get on a soap box about Subud, I just play it by ear and use my feelings. Several years ago, Swedish TV did a "This is Your Life" type programme about me, and I talked at length about Subud in my life and the Indonesian project then.

MB: So, what's next?

VB-H: I feel this Ramadhan has cleared something out for me. I'm seventy-one now, yet I feel a new life starting, so I'll just follow whatever Almighty God has in store for me or guides me to do."

(Assembled from texts of articles in Subud Voice, Subud Euronews, the excellent Barbara Mayer article mentioned above in Arts and Antiques, online references, Beyond Time booklet and other catalogues by Gaye Thavisin and Latifah Taormina, May1999)