Context and Acknowledgments
These conversations, hosted by cultural researcher Oana Nasui, took place during Romanian Jewelry Week 2025. The discussions reveal contemporary jewelry’s multifaceted ecosystem—spanning artistic expression, business development, museum curation, education, and cultural commentary. Each speaker brings unique perspectives on how jewelry functions as art, commerce, cultural artifact, and vehicle for complex narratives about identity, history, and human connection.
Muriel Piaser – Business Development and Global Connections
Muriel Piaser, founder of Precious Room Paris, shares her excitement about her first visit to Bucharest and partnership with Romanian Jewelry Week. With over 25 years in the jewelry industry and 14 years running her own company, she specializes in B2B trade shows and business consultancy. Her expertise spans globally across Paris, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, and other major jewelry markets. For the Precious Room award, Piaser selected two designers whose work particularly moved her. She chose KALITA for the emotional impact of flowers combined with precious stones and the compelling brand story behind the work. Her second choice, Sara Jacobson, impressed her as more than a jeweler—an artist whose work shows originality in bracelet treatment while maintaining femininity. Piaser emphasizes that contemporary consumers seek emotional connections with brands, requiring strong storytelling and clear brand identity. The winners receive complimentary participation at her Paris show, strengthening the international partnership.
Bryna Pomp – Curating Diversity in Contemporary Jewelry
Bryna Pomp, who has directed MAD About Jewelry at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design for 15 years, brings four decades of experience in contemporary jewelry. The museum maintains USA’s only permanent gallery devoted to modern and contemporary jewelry, with over half its collection dedicated to this field. Her annual sale has become the most important opportunity in America for purchasing international contemporary jewelry. Pomp reviews thousands of jewelers annually, selecting 50 for participation with mandatory artist presence to discuss their work directly with collectors. She champions diversity in materials—from traditional metals to horsehair, textiles, and 3D printing—and ensures accessibility across price points. Her selection of Ji Young Kim from South Korea exemplifies her appreciation for work that appears delicate yet demonstrates tremendous strength, creating optical illusions through repetitive wire work that feels organic despite industrial materials.
Andreia Gabriela Popescu – Networking, Synesthesia, and Education
Andreia Gabriela Popescu, Senior Lecturer at Assamblage Contemporary Jewelry School and established designer-manufacturer, discusses her multifaceted role in Romania’s contemporary jewelry scene. She emphasizes the importance of her extensive international network, explaining how she actively cultivates contacts across the global jewelry community and leverages these relationships to invite international professionals to participate in Romanian Jewelry Week. This networking approach has been instrumental in elevating the festival’s international profile.
Andreia shares insights into her creative process, revealing how she employs synesthesia as a conceptual framework in developing her collections. This sensory crossover approach allows her to translate experiences between different perceptual modalities, creating jewelry pieces that engage multiple senses and create deeper emotional resonance with wearers. Her work demonstrates how contemporary jewelry can transcend purely visual aesthetics to become multisensory experiences.
As an educator at Assamblage Contemporary Jewelry School, she discusses the institution’s role in developing Romania’s next generation of jewelry artists. The school actively participates in European jewelry school competitions, providing students with international exposure and benchmarking opportunities. This competitive engagement helps position Romanian jewelry education within the broader European context, fostering exchange and raising standards. Andreia’s triple role as educator, practitioner, and networker exemplifies the interconnected nature of the contemporary jewelry ecosystem, where teaching, creating, and community-building reinforce each other.
Byron Vafeiadis – Museum Perspective and Community Engagement
Byron Vafeiadis, curator at the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum in Athens, brings dual expertise in curation and clinical sociology. Having collaborated with Romanian Jewelry Week for five or six years, he witnesses its growth with satisfaction. His museum award involves acquiring pieces for their permanent collection, requiring exceptional craftsmanship and material innovation. Vafeiadis selected Manami Aoki from Japan, whose work demonstrates respect for tradition through simple tools while transforming demanding materials into unusual forms. He emphasizes the importance of seeing pieces in person, as photographs can be deceiving. His educational work focuses on inclusive programming for audiences with disabilities, recognizing jewelry as one of humanity’s most ancient arts—functional, decorative, and socially significant since prehistoric times. He notes that art therapy essentially began with cave drawings, highlighting art’s fundamental role in human expression and wellbeing.
Jennifer Altmann – Communicating Artistic Vision
Jennifer Altmann, an American journalist with 25 years of experience who discovered contemporary jewelry just a few years ago, conducts workshops helping artists craft compelling statements. Her “Craft Your Artist Statement” workshop guides jewelry artists in expressing their message, materials, and intended viewer response. She uses examples like Melanie Bilenker’s work with individual hair strands to demonstrate how understanding an artist’s process transforms appreciation. Altmann emphasizes jewelry as the most intimate art form—worn on the body rather than displayed in living spaces—making clear artistic communication essential.
Sau-Lun Yeung – Colonial History Through Crystallization
Sau-Lun Yeung, an artist based between Hong Kong and London, creates work inspired by colonialism’s complex history. His pieces incorporate crystallized specimens—cicadas, beetles, bamboo bees—collected from London markets, none native to Europe. This discovery sparked his master’s thesis at Royal College of Art, exploring why these foreign specimens exist in London. His process involves months of crystallizing preserved specimens using personal recipes, embedding them in resin alongside British Hong Kong coat of arms patterns. He uses crystallization and parasitism as metaphors for colonialism, with specimens’ buried identities reflecting colonial erasure. Alongside his artistic practice, Yeung runs The Postcard Traveler, a commercial jewelry brand with two Hong Kong shops, which supports his more conceptual work. He maintains clear separation between commercial pieces for daily wear and her research-based artistic practice.
Oana Nasui is cultural manager and cultural researcher. With professional experience in the fields of cultural expertise: consultancy, management, evaluation, professional training, communication, Oana works as a developer of cultural and creative projects and programs, evaluator of cultural and publishing projects and consultant in cultural planning – programs, strategies, policies.
Recent Comments