Van Cleef & Arpels showcases Cuffs and Necks by Daniel Brush: pure creativity without commercial concerns

Entirely self-taught over a 40-year period, Brush lives and works in a large industrial loft space in New York with his wife Olivia, seemingly removed from changing tastes, fashion or outside influence.

His pieces – such as a carved steel box dotted with gold butterflies, or a granulated box covered in 78,000 hand applied grains of metal, or a trio of brushed steel poppy brooches delicately etched and set with miniscule diamonds – are of sublime museum quality and yet resonate with a contemporary, dynamic verve.

Completely removed from the usual market forces and commercial concerns governing other artists, Brush is singularly obsessed with the idea of creation. “I have no agent, no dealer, no broker. No one sees my work unless they stumble upon it. Before Nicolas Bos [the CEO and creative director of Van Cleef and Arpels] came to visit, I hadn’t shown anything to anyone for five years,” he says.

An exhibition at Van Cleef & Arpels’ Ecole in Paris, entitled Cuffs and Necks, and masterminded by Bos, sees 78 steel chokers displayed in bespoke vertical cabinets – the result of nearly five years work.

Paradoxically, Brush began creating the chokers in order to photograph them for a book; the jewellery in his mind being secondary to the publication that he describes as “a visual poetry book of an artist’s jewelry dream”. Brush stopped at 117 chokers, for no particular reason that one day he became occupied by something else, turning back to his other creative outlets of sculpture and painting.

Each piece is individually hand etched and carved, some with geometric motifs, others with map-like contours; some with polished lines like rivulets of water, and others with lines like doodled pen marks.

“I don’t sketch anything,” he says, “I just sweep my floor every morning for 3 hours, which clears my mind before I start to carve directly into the metal.” Collectively the chokers form one work of art or installation, that Brush insists must never be dispersed. “This isn’t a trunk show,” he says, “the pieces must never be split up”.

Accompanying the chokers, 70 cuffs are displayed, also in steel, a material that he fervently researched for years: “I read books and studied suits of armour”. He realised there were thousands of steel variants and that many were impossible to source because they were government regulation. In the process Brush became good friends with an aerospace engineer, who sent him samples to work on.

Eventually he settled on the perfect alloy, before using his collection of goldsmithing tools and lathes to carve animals, phrases and patterns into the metal. Although for sale, Brush has no interest in commerciality, but instead is concerned with value imbued upon objects by his artistic expression and perfection of technique.

The exhibition will run until October 31, at which point the pieces will return to the drawers in his New York loft, and Brush will continue on his quest, “I don’t go to social events, and I figure what I do is better than playing golf or drinking. It’s simple – I like different materials and I like the technical challenge of overcoming them. But mostly I’m interested in the history of jewellery; I want to be part of that club”.

Daniel Brush Cuffs and Necks Exhibition is at L’École, The School of Jewellery Arts, until 31 October

Supported by Van Cleef & Arpels