Petra Šištíková
Not many people would be surprised by the beauty of a cut diamond set in a golden ring, but there would be certainly many of those who would be truly astounded by a heavenly beautiful ring made of plastic bottles. The work of jewellery artists using recycled materials lies in bringing to attention objects and resources that are often thoughtlessly disposed off, while having an intrinsic beauty capable of giving birth to something new. A Bratislava native Márta Juhász started to recycle cartons for food packaging that were inside lined with a very welcomed silver-coloured layer. Recycling has become a natural part of her art. It is only names of her jewellery collections PET and ALU that give us an ideal what her works of art are made of, i.e. plastic bottles and aluminium cans. Moreover, a Japanese artist Rui Kikuči came up with her PLAnta Series collection made of recycled plastic bottles. Using a hairdryer, she shaped a piece of plastic to a required form, colouring it in three phases. Thanks to the artist’s sense of colours and gentle shapes, her final jewellery pieces remind us of the marine world or exotic vegetation. Furthermore, a Turkish architect, photographer, artist and jewellery designer Gülnur Özdağlar recycles plastic bottles, transforming them to transparent necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings or brooches, giving them organic shapes similar to those of buds, plants at their best, but also to those of medusas. She dubbed her own work as tertium non data, meaning, in Latin, an alchemical process for creating the third, new element by mixing two others. In this article you will also learn about other jewellery designers who, predominantly, recycle materials and objects.