Elfi Spiewack

For background on the artist and works, see below.

Current Works

About the Artist

Elfi Spiewack’s jewellery finds its origins in her immediate environment.  Using her European training and knowledge of materials, her designs are often inspired by nature and the processes of experimentation and play.

While conventional jeweller’s metals of silver and gold often form the basis of her work, Elfi enjoys incorporating found objects into her designs, elevating non-precious materials to the realm of precious jewellery.  Each collection of jewellery explores and extends the properties of her chosen medium, such as the colour and light of gemstones or the contrast of worked silver with the dense opacity of beach pebbles, broken china or the qualities of polished bone.

The design process is often stimulated by her observations of natural materials, shapes and phenomena, but she also finds inspiration in urban culture and current events. She also likes to collaborate with artists in other media. Elfi constantly searches for new means of creative expression, challenging preconceived ideas of the style and meaning of jewellery objects: “I basically like to develop new ways of seeing, wearing and maybe even defining jewellery.”

Born in Germany, Elfi moved to New Zealand in 1999 and lives in Christchurch. She has exhibited widely in New Zealand, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands and the USA, and is respected throughout as a technically skilled and innovative contemporary jeweller and designer. She has had several public exhibitions featuring her jewellery attached to images of old master paintings.