The assignment Its starting point are historical ornaments which are part of traditional costumes. This year jewellery designers are invited to select a traditional ornament from a costume tradition and come up with a new form and/or application for it.
Explanation:
Christina Karababa from Greece went to work on a 19th century gilded-silver double clasp from the collection of the National Historic Museum in Athens. The original clasps are decorated with detailed and complex floral patterns in engraving, granulating and casting techniques. For these closed, compact shapes Karababa has worked out a contemporary counterbalance. For her Porpi 2 design she used a state-of-the-art computer programme – anything but a technical gimmick, according to the jury. Karababa counters the brilliant drudgery of the original with the achievements of digital technology: Rapid Prototyping, meaning the industrial manufacture of single parts (such as the new clasps) straight from 3D-data.
Her Porpi 2 has been executed in cast aluminium. Openwork forms reminiscent of a 3D reproduction of the hilly landscape around the village of Porpi in northern Greece. Karababa brings together technique, origin and tradition of great sculptural value, according to the jury.
