Jacqueline De Jong
Pommes de Jong, 2012
Shrunk potato, sprouts, 18kt yellow gold plated earrings
6 x 25 cm
Unique
ref. N2
Pommes de Jong is an ongoing project that came to life in 2007 in Bouan (Bourbonnais, France) where in the mid 1990’s de Jong and her husband decided to buy a house. She created a vegetable garden and they planted potatoes in memory of the lack of food during the war. De Jong stored the potatoes in a 13th Century cellar and suddenly realized that she was fascinated by the huge amount of sprouts that were growing from the shrunk tubers. When de Jong was asked by a jewellery collector to make a jewel for her, she thought that she might do something with these shrunk potatoes and their sprouts that were getting longer and longer. Pommes de Jong were inspired by the idea of transforming a humble object into a precious one.
In the realization of the wearable art, the potatoes and their sprouts are dried slowly by the artist over a period of two years and are submerged in a bath of platinum or gold becoming exclusive pieces of wearable art.
