The German jewelry artist Bettina Speckner began her artistic studies in the painting department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, eventually transferring to the jewelry department and working under Professor Herman Junger. Speckner’s first solo exhibition was in 1995, and since then her work has been shown in galleries and museums internationally and has become part of permanent collections both in Germany and abroad, garnering numerous awards and commendations. Her work was included most recently in the 2014 Jewelry and Photography exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Public collections holding her work include the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, the Danner Foundation, Munich, the Design Museum, Helsinki, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Gallery, Australia, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Speckner utilizes the photograph as raw material for her jewelry, evoking the idea of narrative. Her work has harnessed the inherent “historical” quality of found photographs to elicit a new experience of time—an experience that doesn’t adhere to a single identifiable moment or place.