Jablonec'68 - THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL SILVER JEWELRY SYMPOSIUM

2018 will mark 50 years since the first International Silver Jewelry Symposium in Jablonec in 1968, in what was then Communist Czechoslovakia. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this unique moment in the history of studio jewelry, Die Neue Sammlung is staging an exhibition where the works created for the exhibition will be on display again for the first time. From the middle of the 19th century, Jablonec nad Nisou became a mecca for the jewelry industry, thanks to its proximity to the centres of Bohemian glass-making at Libereč and Železný Brod. Glass beads and jewelry were exported as far afield as Africa and industrial exhibitions were staged. At the end of the 1960s, however, the world-wide economic downturn also hit the Czechoslovakian jewelry industry. The symposium was an attempt to find a way out of this dilemma by harnessing modern ideas, promoting international exchange and building on the success which Czechoslovakian jewelry had enjoyed at the world exhibitions in Brussels in 1958 and Montreal in 1967.