Sebastian + Barquet gallery presents Unwearable Jewels, the first U.S. exhibition of work by renowned London-based jewelry designer Solange Azagury-Partridge. Unwearable Jewels features decorative objects that incorporate precious and semi-precious stone: handmade carpets, tables, wall plaques, and chandeliers, each one more excessive than the last. The exhibition will be on view from October 31 – December 20 at Sebastian + Barquet, 544 West 24th Street, New York City. An opening reception will take place Thursday, October 30th from 6:00 – 8:00pm.

With Unwearable Jewels, Solange translates her jewelry designs into art for the home. Echoing motifs from her Cosmic jewelry collection, each piece of wall art is an alchemic totem, conceived as a picture and composed of intricate stone inlay intuiting mystic themes. Overhanging it all, the star of the show: a chandelier encrusted with 220 carats of diamonds, which, like the lost earring of a mysterious, shameless princess, shimmers voluptuously with a thousand refracted flames. As an inveterate jewelry creator, could Solange do this without including wearable pieces? No: the exhibit includes rings transposing the exhibit’s themes into sparklers for the fingers.

The opulence of each image radiates from the precious stones within. Framed in polished ebony, these magical objects mesmerize and delight. This collection of visually luxurious pieces conjures a thousand and one nights of joyous, sensual pleasure in an Oriental palace layered with priceless objects d’art: walls studded with bejeweled images, extravagant hand-made carpets, tables inlaid with precious gems, and sparkling diamond chandeliers.

What makes each of Solange’s pieces unexpected is the designer’s irreverence for precious materials combined with the utmost craftsmanship and quality. The only rule Solange applies to every creation is to subvert expectations of how precious stones and metals should be combined.

“Anything inspires me,” Solange says of her designs, which in 2004 become permanent fixtures in the venerated jewelry gallery at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs du Louvre in Paris and in 2008 became part of the permanent collection in the prestigious new jewelry gallery of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. In early 2009 Solange will open her first U.S. boutique in New York located at 809 Madison Avenue.

Special thanks to Kopenhagen Fur for their kind support.