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Claude Lalanne fans are in fine company. Admirers of the French sculptor form a Rolodex of some of the most influential figures of the 20th century: Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, Gunter Sachs, Dodie Rosekrans, Valentino, Karl Lagerfeld, Anne Gruner Schlumberger, Baron Guy and Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild… and now we can add fashion designer and queen of the voluminous sleeve Ulla Johnson to that list. Johnson has recently collaborated with Lalanne’s granddaughter, Julie Hamisky, who is following closely in her footsteps, on a new collection of jewellery that debuted at New York Fashion Week.
It was Johnson’s love for Lalanne and her pioneering, surrealistic sculptures that led her to discover, and fall for, Hamisky’s work. The latter artist, like her grandmother, to whom she was apprenticed, casts fresh flowers in copper, bronze and brass, using the lost wax technique, preserving fleeting moments of natural impermanence with satisfying finality. Unlike her antecedent, however, she uses a 3D printer to manipulate the scale of her material to dramatic effect, enabling her to create exquisitely detailed fine jewellery, but also giant flowers, some eight feet tall. One such Brobdingnagian sculpture – an electroplated enlargement of a poppy – La Geante (‘the giantess’) – was displayed during Ulla Johnson’s NYFW show; towering head and shoulders above even the most willowy of models like an alienate antennae.
Kasmin Gallery – which represents the artists Alma Allen and Lee Krasner, with whom Johnson has worked before – played matchmaker once again in this new pairing. ‘The gallery knows my taste quite well and understood my enthusiasm for Claude’s work, so they invited me to Julie’s New York show last year,’ says Johnson. She was immediately drawn to the artist’s jewellery, in which anthers, filaments and stigmas are immortalised, some alert, some broken or tangled, in the thin metallic coating for which Hamisky has become known. ‘The collection is rooted in this gilded opulence, but also in this idea of imperfection,’ says Ulla, who chose the flowers that Julie then transformed into a series of 12 rings, necklaces and a belt.
Hamisky describes the technique she uses to produce them, which involves placing the flowers in a metal solution before passing an electric current through it, as a ‘confrontation’. ‘It is always that way, when you are preserving the body of a flower before it collapses,’ she explains. ‘You never really know what result electroplating will give you, and at a certain moment, there’s always a surprise. Sometimes decay would emphasise a proper characteristic, or make it something else entirely.’
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Johnson, likewise, is no stranger to dealings in decay. Her parents were archaeologists and she grew up travelling the world, hands in the dirt, seeking treasures like roots. So, although though different media, both Julie and Ulla are hardwired to preserve beauty. ‘There’s been something quite mystical in the whole collaboration,’ says Johnson. ‘The world feels very fragile right now. Just knowing that a sense of beautiful permanence that can come from these states of flux and movement is something that feels especially relevant.’ Julie agrees: ‘We are both seeking beauty in every corner without respite.’
Despite being a true disciple of her grandmother, Julie observes clear differences between her career today and when her grandparents were working in the middle of the 20th century. Alongside the obvious progresses – like the 3D printing available to her, which cracks open electroplating’s potential – there are challenges, too. ‘There’s a constant flow of images we’re bathing in today.’ Her flowers, suspended and timeless, are an antidote to that, offering us all a welcome moment of pause.
For more information, visit ullajohnson.com
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