This piece is part of the Royal College of Art Visiting Artists Collection. Every year from 1987 to 2006, while David Watkins was Professor of Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery at the RCA, he invited four jewellers and silversmiths from outside Britain to give a week-long masterclass. The artists brought diverse skills, aesthetics and approaches. The first call on their time was to interact closely with the students. In addition, although concentrating on their teaching and working in an unfamiliar studio, each artist generously made an object for the RCA's collection. The Royal College of Art Visiting Artists Collection, now transferred to the V&A, is a major document of international contemporary jewellery, a tribute both to the artists and to the vibrancy of the RCA as a teaching institution.

Bettina Dittlmann was trained as a silversmith in the Staatliche Berufsfachschule für Glas und Schmuck in Neugablonz, and as a goldsmith at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich under Professors Hermann Jünger and Otto Künzli. Dittlmann works freelance in her studio in Bavaria.

From an interview with Bettina Dittlmann about her ‘Millenium Bridge’ necklace (with Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, in 2007):

Dittlmann found it a hard task being a guest lecturer and also leading a masterclass at the Royal College of Art in London in June 2005, not to mention the task of making a piece for the collection. On her first day at the College she bought a sketchbook and every white pencil that was available in the RCA store. "White" was the theme she chose for the students. In her sketchbook Dittlmann was drawing white on almost white paper designing white wire structures. Drawing was a way for her to rethink her work. She made sketches when visiting the V&A, the British Museum and Tate Modern. Here she saw the exhibition: ‘the honest objects’.

The intensity of Dittlmann’s London experience increased her urge for nature and the quiet. On her way back to the tube, crossing the Millenium Bridge, she looked down to the Thames and wanted to escape from the city, its art and everything artificial. Climbing down to the river Thames at low tide, she felt the calm and quiet, London appeared far away, only one other person was there, an Australian photographer. Dittlmann walked under the bridge looking for objects, among all the pebbles, animal bones and teeth, tiles, found white cylindrical tubes, where they appeared to be almost organized according to their weight. It was as if she was in an outdoor museum of the City of London. The man watching her collect them in great numbers explained that what she had collected were broken claypipes discarded by historical voyagers, and said: "You should make a necklace". In that moment her task for the RCA was solved.

She strung the pipe fragments on her special iron binding wire, with which she normally designs her jewellery. Dittlmann is well-known for her technique of making spontaneous and sculptural looking forms in wire with powder coating in a variety of colours.

As Dittlmann said: ‘the necklace is white and the biggest piece of jewellery, that I have made so far. I am very content with it, as it says a lot about me, and even more about London’.