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Financial Mail
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Sonja Zytkow
Article - January 18, 2008
 
If classical or quaint
is your bent, Sonja Zytkow's necklaces and bracelets aren't for you.
Why? Because they are literally extra ordinary. She makes them by
mixing brass with pearls, glass with semi precious stones, gold with
resin and silver with base metals, to name just a few of the
products at her fingertips. The result is pieces that seem to leap
at you from the wearer's body, demanding you look at them.
They are not for the faint-hearted, yet have been selling faster
than Zytkow can make them, both in Paris and in Cajarc, a sexy
little cultural tourist destination near Toulouse, France, where
Zytkow lived for a few months.
Sonja Zytkow -
Levitation 1986
Of Polish and Dutch descent, Zytkow was originally a ceramic
sculptor who owned a factory in Johannesburg. She was so successful
that she had to sell it, for her designing talent turned to
administration nightmares. It became a big business "by default",
she says, as products leapt off the shelves. Managing was not her
desired occupation, so she moved on to promote high-end SA products
in Italy and France.
On a trip home, one of her former staffers, Angel Khweswa, asked
Zytkow to help her establish the Izimbali Group, a grassroots
initiative that makes flowers which can be attached to anything from
foot thongs to cell phone pouches - and necklaces. The last got
Zytkow's dormant creative juices flowing again, and she began
designing necklaces without, as she puts it, "the same constraints
that trained jewellery designers might impose on themselves. This
allows me an unlimited experimental approach to the design of any
piece."
So she mixes silver with acrylic, and gold with wood. She talks
about pink and yellow gold and describes her jewellery as
three-dimensional pieces of sculpture. "The principles are the same
but the mechanics are different." She takes her designs to engineers
whose eyes boggle when she asks them to manufacture some of the
parts.
Sonja Zytkow 1986
Zytkow studied fine arts, film-making and sculpture in the UK before
obtaining her master's degree in ceramics at Berkeley in California.
Her hands fly through the air as she talks about structures, spaces
and pieces. "Look, you can't even see what I've used to separate
these beads made by a Zimbabwean woodcarver."
She sources silver in India or Thailand because of its quality, and
can mix different kinds of materials to suit your pocket. For that's
another of her distinctions. Zytkow will design to your wish. If you
get tired of your necklace, you can take it back and she'll take it
apart and re design it for you. "Some buy on impulse, regret it and
want to change it totally, or perhaps modify it," she says. She
can't replace some things, of course; for instance, antique Ghanaian
beads or 19th-century Zulu beads.
Today, Zytkow sells in France; at Chemistry in Parktown North,
Johannesburg; and from her Houghton studio. She designs specific
pieces for Galerie Ezakwantu in Franschhoek. Her favorite clients
are Italians who, when they can't decide between three pieces of
jewellery, simply buy the lot.
Click the thumbs below
to view art works by Sonja Zytkow.
Click the thumbnail to view our current stock of Sonja
Zytkow's jewelry creations.
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