Catalogue Beauty of Violence

Designer Ted Noten switches back and forth between various disciplines and ‘scenes’ and is consciously searching for the border between autonomous art and applied art. Although principally a jewellery-maker, he has also dabbled in ceramics, expressive art and product design. For instance, working together with Droog Design, he presented his work at the Furniture Exhibition in Milan and he followed a residency with the European Ceramics Workcentre. Nevertheless, over the years he has succeeded in developing his own personal signature.

Design remains at the core of Noten’s work. In his designs he has an idiosyncratic way of placing elements from everyday reality in an entirely different light. He takes symbols out of their own trusted environment and places them in a different context. For instance, he made a boxing fist guard the size of a baby’s hand and he transformed a gun into a handbag. Noten’s project ‘Chew your own broche’, that allowed you to cast your own (self-chewed) chewing gum in bronze, silver or gold, made everyone into a jewellery-designer. With experiments like this, Noten is having an unsettling effect on the exclusive status of jewellery.