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Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Jewellery, Rooms 91, The William and Judith Bollinger Gallery

frozen

Necklace
2011 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

The jeweller Sam Tho Duong was born in Vietnam in 1969 and came to Germany in his teens. He is based in the jewellery-making city of Pforzheim where he took a traditional apprenticeship followed by a diploma in Design.

In this necklace he brings together the simple, time-honoured jewellery materials of silver and freshwater pearls with radical and beautiful results. Pearls are usually regarded as objects of beauty in their own right and worn very simply, but in this necklace they become a means to achieve a very different effect. The pearls appear to grow out of the blackened, bulbous forms beneath, softening them and echoing various natural forms but particularly the frost which gives the name to his “frozen” series of jewels to which this necklace belongs.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Titlefrozen (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
The spheres are hollow and have small holes through which the black nylon thread attaches the pearls. The end of the thread is melted to form the decorative black end.
Brief description
Necklace of oxidised silver, freshwater pearls and nylon, designed and made by Sam Tho Duong, Germany, 2011
Physical description
The necklace consists of clusters of patinated silver spheres, each covered with upended freshwater pearls which are tipped with dots of black nylon. The clusters hang from a chain of patinated silver cylindrical beads of different shades and dimensions, each individually distorted and ridged. At thee points a crumpled cylindrical bead protrudes at right angles to the others, and there is a similar protrusion from the end of the largest pearl-covered cluster. The cylindrical beads adjacent to the clusters are decorated with a small number of nylon-tipped pearls. The whole is threaded on two narrow twisted wires.

Dimensions
  • Necklace as worn height: 385mm
  • Necklace as worn width: 250mm
  • Deepest cluster depth: 61mm
Marks and inscriptions
unmarked
Credit line
Purchase funded by the Friends of the V&A
Object history
Purchased at COLLECT 2013
Summary
The jeweller Sam Tho Duong was born in Vietnam in 1969 and came to Germany in his teens. He is based in the jewellery-making city of Pforzheim where he took a traditional apprenticeship followed by a diploma in Design.

In this necklace he brings together the simple, time-honoured jewellery materials of silver and freshwater pearls with radical and beautiful results. Pearls are usually regarded as objects of beauty in their own right and worn very simply, but in this necklace they become a means to achieve a very different effect. The pearls appear to grow out of the blackened, bulbous forms beneath, softening them and echoing various natural forms but particularly the frost which gives the name to his “frozen” series of jewels to which this necklace belongs.
Collection
Accession number
M.20-2013

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Record createdMay 20, 2013
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