Necklace

Created by the renowned Norwegian jeweller and artist Tone Vigeland, this necklace comes from her Feathers series and was made around 1985. Constructed from numerous black iron nails, which have been hammered flat and attached to a chain-mail base, the piece resembles a feathered bird tail, with its imaginative construction imparting a sense of movement and immediacy, especially when worn on the body.

Tone Vigeland was born into a family of artists. Much of her early work demonstrated the minimal lines characteristic of Scandinavian design during the mid-twentieth century. From the early 1980s onwards, however, her work evolved into a distinctive sculptural style, with her adoption of a range of unusual materials, such as screws and nails, which she intricately transformed into neck pieces, rings and bracelets.

Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design