Manon van Kouswijk  has spent her artistic career exploring and translating archetypal jewelry forms and motifs through various materials and processes. Traces of the making process are often visible in Manon's work. The imperfection of the handmade, present in marks of fingerprints is an integral part of her objects. She views these archetypes as templates that she uses for her translations of the jewelry types she works from, such as the beaded necklace.

"I’m here and I am listening to my hands, letting them initiate the next move.

Things around me seem to know quite well what they want to become, it’s me who doesn’t know where this is going yet (they must have forgotten to tell me..).

I wish for them to find their ideal form, I’m not in the mood to dictate very much at all.

Making is searching, an ongoing exercise, I’m moving with it, alongside it.

Pushing, rolling, looping, folding, layering, twisting.

Sometimes there is friction; cracking, tearing, splitting.

A three-dimensional drawing method in which shapes reveal themselves, patterns are generated through procedure, making makes itself visible..."     

 MANON VAN KOUSWIJK