… an episode of continuous work on VDK collection
Some of us have never met Vera. We process her collection and research her archive, which is full not only of professionally important sketches, blueprints, drawings, but also personal notes, quips, accounts, other people’s and author’s poems, photographs, mixed with doodles, chemical recipes and notes from talks with her acquaintances, friends and colleagues. Through the research we discover and explore not only Vera’s great artistic production but also her life. An important aspect of it was socializing with people of different professions, classes, and generations for whom her atelier was a meeting place.
Vera’s interest in creating in different media is evident as soon as one enters the Atelier: reliefs, sculptures and drawings hang on the almost completely filled walls – both finished works and unfinished experiments characteristic of her expression. But the VDK Collection includes much more than that visible part. In numerous closets there are various sketches, notes, tools and materials, author’s poems, books she collected during numerous trips and reminders of dear friends and colleagues. In addition to the listed and processed projects and works, a large part refers to unknown artifacts that still need to be studied and contextualized. This is helped by the fact that Vera repeatedly transferred ideas to other media, often expanding on motifs and thematic units, among which the most present are lovers, women, sailors, mythological stories, family trees, the zodiac, music and dance. The motif of the Witch-from-the-Grič (Grič or Grich is the old name for the medieval citadel of Zagreb) is a common motif, found in, for example, drawings, notes, public art and even songs. Floral motifs are also very common, especially the thistle flower as a symbolic element.
A strong woman, a restless spirit, inclined to experiment in diverse media, with different techniques that–we found out–are still an enigma to many people, she was mostly financed by the sale of her original jewelry.
This collection is the last segment in the cataloging process, which has been carried out since 2015 in varied dynamics and phases. So far, a number of experts have participated in this. With their knowledge and effort they contributed to the cataloging and preservation of pieces from her oeuvre, enabling the presentation of it to the general public.
Vera made jewelry since the 1960s until her death, continuously experimenting with different techniques, materials, shapes and colors. In the kiln, in her studio, she fired ceramics, fused glass and made castings. In a special bathtub, in the loft of the studio, she made chemical baths according to her own recipe, where she shaped and changed different metals through the galvanization process, which she creatively adapted to her own needs. She enameled, painted, silvered and gilded her jewelry; forged it, and set plants and stones with metal. Each piece went through several different layers of work in a long and demanding manufacturing process, on the thin border between sculpture and alchemy, where the structure and forms of various materials changed multiple times.
At first glance, the simple task of listing Vera’s jewelry, which we enthusiastically and somewhat naively accepted, turned into a challenging forensic investigation. Determining the material and technique for each individual piece of jewelry turned into a–sometimes impossible–mission in which it is necessary to detect different layers of processing. Given Vera’s extremely experimental and unique approach to jewelry making, this requires an in-depth approach to the analysis of every single ring, necklace, bracelet, brooch or pendant. We enlisted the help of various experts who deal with metalworking and artistic jewelry to help us with the detection. Thus, our research began to slowly expand beyond Vera’s own atelier and gallery and led us to other interesting studios and artists. Some of them, like Lazar Lumezi, were her friends who revealed to us some new stories from her life and work, but also from the local history of the art of jewelry making. We have been down similar paths and created an open-source catalogue of some of her other works available to the public. Yet it remains to be seen in which directions this research on Vera’s jewelry will take us.