While investigating metal and movement on a vast scale, Pol Bury also began to explore the same themes in miniature. Working with GEM Montebello in Milan and Galerie Maeght, he produced a series of gold jewellery editions ‘for fun’, many of which were exhibited at Cartier in New York in 1971. Unusually for artists’ jewellery (though not surprisingly), many of these editions sold out at the time. In Bury’s jewellery, the movement of the body took the place of the magnets that characterised his large-scale work.
The success of the jewellery at the time led to some en pointe reportage, which rings true today:
‘Though it may sound intellectual, the Bury jewellery is actually far more sensual than mathematical in its perpetual motion and changing glitter… One of the fascinating pieces is the wide clip-on bracelet decorated with a golden half-sphere half full of tiny balls. A ring is stacked like a pyramid of gold slabs that are constantly changing position. “I liked doing it,” says Pol Bury... he thinks the rings, bracelets and medallions should be sold with their own cubes... when they are not being worn they could be set on the cubes like a miniature sculpture. He may be starting more than he thinks...’1
The jewellery was very typical of Pol Bury. Often, it was mounted with gold spheres, which were attached to equivalent spheres on the underside. He cared how the jewellery felt against the wearer and gave equal importance to both views of the jewels. Many rings and bracelets followed in various forms, in white gold, yellow gold or silver. The spheres varied from ‘rods’ to ‘bars’ but none were static.
1 ‘Inside Fashion, Eugenia Sheppard’, New York Post, Monday 12 April 1971. Pictured in Pol Bury, Ex. Cat. Ed. Daniel Marchesseau, Foundations EDF Paris, Flammarion, p41.