There is something innately human about jewellery. The phenomenon of jewellery can be found in all epochs and eras, as well as in all cultures. The “Eva and Peter Herion” collection has been given to the Jewellery Museum as a permanent loan. When the remodelled Jewellery Museum opened in 2006, parts of the Herion Collection were set up with a special focus on Africa and Asia. Conceived as a semi-permanent exhibition back then, it will now be redesigned on the basis of a fundamentally new approach. The discussion held in recent years, and increasingly of late, about our approach to ethnographic artefacts requires a new view of non-European jewellery. The aim is to come up with a new concept that takes the insights gained from the current discussion and its key aspects into due account.
Here it is equally essential to see the objects in their individual cultural-historical contexts, to consider the artistic aspirations involved, and to regard them within the framework of global jewellery history.
