The Art Gallery of SA stagesThe Daalder Collection of Contemporary Jewellery

When Truus and Joost Daalder started bidding at auctions to furnish their first home together, they had no idea they were starting a half-century journey that would leave them with one of Australia's finest collections of international contemporary jewellery All the while the Daalders were collecting and, last year, in an extraordinarily generous move, they gave some of the fruits of their labours to the Art Gallery of South Australia, doubling the gallery's collection of contemporary jewellery Suddenly, SA owned one of the nation's biggest collections of contemporary jewellery - works that, while small in scale, command significant attention in the art world.

Straitened times in the arts had made it clear to them that they would not find a buyer for the contemporary jewellery as a whole "Gradually we became interested in ethnic jewellery, even more interested than in the Victorian jewellery, and we also bought some pieces of early 20th century contemporary jewellery, but of a conventional kind," says Joost "We started looking for non-commercial, creative material made by artists.

Until then we were not aware of how interesting and creative contemporary jewellery could be." "But generally, pieces speak to us in their own language, and we respond to that language, the language used by the artist, which cannot be transcribed into words." ● To Have and To Hold: The Daalder Collection of Contemporary Jewellery at the Art Gallery of South Australia continues until January. . Source