Lída Šikolová’s deep connection to jewellery-making reflects a situation characteristic of northern Bohemia’s Sudetenland region: She hails from a typical Czech-German family in which talent and a love for glass and jewellery were passed down from one generation to the next. Her personal and professional life is likewise firmly rooted in this region, which has been distinctively shaped not only by a centuries-long tradition of artistic craftsmanship, but also by ethnic conflict and the upheavals that shaped the lives of its inhabitants.

Šikolová’s artistic practice weds a mastery of craftsmanship with a sense for the material, with openness and an unorthodox approach to all the things one might imagine under the term jewellery. Inventiveness, technical skill, curiosity and the ability to play and experiment form the foundations for her multifaceted body of work characterised by the use of various materials and techniques. She is skilled in a wide range of artisanal fields, including metalwork, casting, enamelling and electroplating, but she also makes frequent use of seemingly inartistic materials. On her workbench we may thus easily encounter precious metals traditionally associated with jewellery, but also essentially alchemical substances as well as materials usually considered fragile and ephemeral – paper, translucent sheets of mica, butterfly wings or even dried apple slices.

What inspires her? Objects and events from everyday life, the distinctive characteristics of materials, unexpected encounters and a sense of enchantment from ephemeral experiences. And also history and a relationship to tradition. In other words, stories – which are always an integral part of and inherent driving force behind her works, imbuing them with meaning and lending them a deeper resonance. Regardless of her source of inspiration, however, the path by which she creates her contemporary jewellery always involves a challenge to be perceptive, to discover and to be astonished at the multifaceted nature of the world and the imagination.