Ted Noten

Born in the Dutch town of Tegelen in 1956, Noten explored careers such as bricklaying and nursing at a psychiatric hospital before applying to art school. He enrolled in the Maastricht Academy for Applied Arts in the Netherlands, and in 1990 he obtained a degree from Amsterdam's Gerrit Rietveld Academie. From 2005 to 2008 Noten worked as a senior international research fellow at the Birmingham School of Jewellery of Birmingham City University in the UK. Since 2007 he teaches master classes at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Noten's 1995 Turbo Princess pendant, featuring a little mouse cast in acrylic and wearing a small pearl necklace, started off his success. In 2011 it was commemorated by a limited edition pin.

In 1998 Noten developed an ongoing project called Chew Your Own Brooch. It was first explored at the Rotterdam art museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Appr. 800 visitors, including many children, were given a piece of chewing gum and asked to "chew their own brooch". Once they were satisfied with the shape they had produced, the piece was put in a little box, marked, and judged by a panel. First, second and third-place winners were then presented with their brooches, made of their own piece of chewing gum cast respectively in 24K gold, silver and bronze. For many years now Noten has provided clients with their own chewing kit. When the client is satisfied with the shape they produced the piece of gum is returned and a replica brooch is made cast in silver or gold.

In 1998, Noten was awarded the German Herbert Hoffmann Preis. Every year this award is granted to three outstanding jewelry designers who show their work at the Schmuck exhibition in Munich, Germany. Schmuck was established in 1959 by Dr. Herbert Hoffmann and is the eldest exhibition of contemporary jewellery work in the world. Noten's tiara design for Dutch crown princess Maxima won the first prize in 2002. In 2006 his monograph CH2=C(CH3)C(=O)OCH3 and other TN's published by Rotterdam-based publisher 010 won Best Dutch Book Designs. In 2008, Noten received the Dutch Françoise van den Bosch award, which recognizes an international jeweler whose work embodies exceptional quality and innovation. In 2011 Ted Noten won the Dutch Artist of the Year award.

The Mercedes Brooch is made from steel parts cut from the body of a Mercedes-Benz E-Class 210 model luxury car. Noten started this project in 2001 with his work 100 Pieces in which he took a section of a new car and divided it into 100 fragments, each unique in size and form. That way the brooch wearer could become part owner of a new Mercedes-Benz. Noten followed it up in 2003 with a different car. In 2007 and 2008 he just used the hood. The 2001 brooches are white, the 2003 red. Priced at €200.00 a piece.

In 2002, Noten participated among 40 (21 in final) Dutch artists and designers in a tiara design competition honouring the marriage between Maxima Zorreguieta and the Dutch crown prince Willem-Alexander. Noten's design of a shiny chromed polo helmet with a clip-on tiara won first prize. The jury referred to it as a 'cheeky' design. Noten intended the tiara, with small portraits of all Dutch queens positioned as guardian angels on top, to be used in church during the wedding ceremony. Afterwards the princess could combine the tiara with the helmet to protect herself against paparazzi when she ventured into the city of Amsterdam (or if she felt confident enough her husband might want to wear the helmet).

At art exhibitions the visitor usually is not allowed to touch the displayed objects, not even when they clearly have a functional background like an artistic chair or jewellery. Therefore, Noten used a funfair machine he called Mr Claw to offer visitors the opportunity to actually touch works of art. Mr Claw contains plastic bubbles with small pieces of jewellery inside the visitor can attempt to grab by using the machine's remote-controlled grabber. As a special attraction Noten put a 1 kg silver bar inside as well (unfortunately this item is too heavy to be lifted by the grabber). Mr Claw was used at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Geel metalliek: Goud voor Robert Smit exhibition on contemporary jewellery in 2004, and at the Icon Experiment 2008 exhibition in London, UK.

At a 2004 exhibition at the Amsterdam art society Arti & Amicitiae Noten used an installation with an industrial robot to show his Paperheadring that contained a tiny paper hat cast in acrylic. In the 2011 project Lady Killer Vol. 1 the concept of an automated jewellery box was further explored.

In 2004, Noten collected a large amount of low-price earthenware crockery from a Dutch budget store. He arranged the crockery in piles, fixed the design and had it gold-plated as a contrast. These unique objects he called Golden Piles or Festive Table Centers. Golden Pile 9 (2004) is a stack of plates that is in the Rotterdam Museum Boijmans van Beuningen collection.

On Noten's 2004 trip from Tokyo to Amsterdam he purchased, found or swapped objects that he afterwards transformed into jewelry designs that represented cities he visited, experiences he had, and people he met. In total 16 different works, i.e. the Chinese city of Tianjin is represented by a necklace with a large red drill. The Mongolian city of Erenhot is represented by a pendant that is now in the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art collection.

In 2005, visitors to the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, Portugal, which houses ancient art treasures from around the world, would receive a special brooch Noten designed by using the emblem of the Order of Saint James of the Sword, a famous Portuguese Order of Chivalry. Then the visitors were invited to make a picture or portrait with the brooch in their hometown and place this image on a dedicated website. That way a special bond would be created between the worldwide visitors' community and the museum.

In 2005, Noten commented on Cartier's iconic Love Bracelet, that can only be unlocked by the partner, by producing The Real Love Bracelet, a silver bracelet attached to a blown glass bubble with a pair of rings inside. That way the wearer always has a pair of rings handy and only needs to break the bubble when the right moment has arrived.

In 2006, Rotterdam-based 010 publishers published Noten's 328-page monograph titled CH2=C(CH3)C(=O)CH3 enclosures and other TN's ( ISBN 978 90 6450 555 3). The title refers to the chemical formula of the PMMA material, much used by Noten. Created out of a pile of thousands of photographs, combined with informational as well as poetic text, the book offers compositions, associations, and narratives to illustrate Noten's work. It achieved the Best Dutch Book Design 2006 award.

Noten has participated in numerous exhibitions around the world and he is represented by galleries and museum collections worldwide. In 2006, Noten was a keynote speaker at the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) conference in Chicago. In 2011, Atelier Ted Noten participated in the Glasstress exhibition.

In 2007, a half-hour radio interview was aired in which Noten discusses his monograph with Brett Littman, the director of The Drawing Center art museum in New York City.

In 2008 the city of Amsterdam started a project to improve the red light district in the old city centre. Noten participated with a street vending machine that sold red rings with a wide variety of designs for only €2.50. The rings were intended to be bought for the neighbourhood prostitutes by their clients. Noten called the project Be nice to a girl, buy her a ring and hoped it would improve the mutual respect between prostitutes and clients, and that it might even introduce a more romantic atmosphere in the red light district. Afterwards he offered the red rings, cased and numbered in a limited edition of 250 pieces, as true art objects for €310.00 each.

For the 2008 exhibition LINGAM - 121 contemporary fertility symbols artists, designers and jewellery makers from 24 countries were asked to create new lingam objects based on the ancient fertility symbol. Noten contributed with a series of porcelain dildos with miniature objects attached, i.e. a car pulling a caravan and a highway lamppost. A white porcelain dildo with miniature Delftware attached is priced at €3,000.00.

In 2008 Atelier Ted Noten provided the renovated Rotterdam art museum Boijmans van Beuningen with a multimedia installation. It consists of a golden mobile, called Periscope, positioned in the museum's lobby. The museum's new entrance ticket is a letter that the visitor can use to display an image of an item from the museum's collection on one of the walls of the lobby. The letter changes daily, the text and images projected from Periscope change equally.

On November 23, 2008, Noten was awarded with the Francoise van den Bosch award, an international prize for innovative jewellery makers, and he combined the award ceremony with a catwalk presentation of highlights from his work since 1995 for the opening of a solo-exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum 's-Hertogenbosch.

A special design is Avondvlinder (translated Evening butterfly, another expression for prostitute) a.k.a. Miss Piggy (a ring with on top a piglet with a pearl necklace) that is produced in gold and titanium, as well as in nylon. It is based on Noten's 2008 Pig Bracelet made of sintered nylon. The Pig Bracelet is priced at €1,800.00 and the Avondvlinder (Miss Piggy) ring at appr. €13,000.00 (18K gold and depending on gold price), or €925.00 (titanium), or €80.00 (glassfiber-filled nylon).

In 2009, during the fashion exhibition Gejaagd door de wind (Gone with the wind) at the Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen, Noten showed his work The Revenge of the Pearl Necklace consisting of the decomposing body of a pike that gradually exposed a pearl necklace Noten had put inside the stomach of the fish. Visitors were overwhelmed by the smell. Later during the exhibition Noten showed a video of the decomposing process together with the pike's cleaned skeleton and the necklace itself. With The Revenge Noten is referring to the Zuiderzee fishermen's loathing of pearls as these were very popular with the nobility.

In 2009, Noten started, inspired by a card of Japanese artist Hokusai Katsushika (1760–1849), his ongoing Haunted by 36 Women project. Like Hokusai who created 36 drawings from the mountain he loved, Noten chose 36 archetypes of women to design jewellery for. First, a life-size sculpture is constructed, which is then transformed into a wearable art object, made out of different materials like nylon, stainless steel, titanium, silver or gold.

In 2009, the Dutch Design Fashion and Architecture (DutchDFA) group commissioned a short documentary film about Noten as part of their Dutch Profiles series on contemporary architects and graphic, product and fashion designers in the Netherlands. These documentaries are meant to be spread freely over the web and as part of lectures, exhibitions and business presentations.

Since 2010 Ted Noten offers people who have quit smoking a reminder as well as moral support by making a brooch from their last cigarette. These unique brooches are 18K gold-plated and priced at €850.00.

In 2010, Atelier Ted Noten participated in the exhibition Contemplating the Void that marked the 50th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The museum asked for designs that would provide the visitor with an inspiring view of the large central atrium of the Guggenheim building. ATN suggested an installation design that made use of a sparkling curtain of Swarovski crystals falling from the ceiling. A special projector light on the crystals would then generate a vertical rainbow of colours across the atrium.

In 2010, Noten designed a life-size apple with a golden stem, topped with a small black diamond, called De Verleiding (The Temptation). The golden stem with diamond is in fact a brooch and the apple serves as a decorative stand for when the brooch is not worn. In a yellow and a black 3D-printed limited edition of ten pieces it is priced at €1,200.00.

To celebrate the opening of the Mint Museum Uptown, the Mint Museum of Craft+Design, Charlotte, US, launched Project Ten Ten Ten on October 1, 2010. Ten innovative international artists in the fields of glass, jewelry, furniture and fiber art where commissioned, including Ted Noten, to create exclusive works for the permanent collection of the museum. Noten developed an interactive piece called SLOW - Eleven Women and 400 Daisies as an homage to the Mint Museum's Auxiliary women, as well as to all American women. SLOW consists of a golden buste, with the features of ten famous American women, that is completely covered with white 3D-printed nylon daisies. The daisies double as brooches and every new Auxiliary member will be given one to wear. That way it will take appr. 18 years before the entire buste is revealed (hence the title SLOW).

In 2010 and 2011 Atelier Ted Noten teamed up with Amsterdam-based 3D-printing company Freedom Of Creation (FOC) to create the Dutch Fashion Awards. These designs consist of 3D-printed necklaces that represent each of the six prize categories. Matching badges for jury officials were also made. Special attention was given to the Mercedes sponsored award that incorporates the Mercedes star. The 2010 awards are yellow, the 2011 are red.

In 2010, a one-hour documentary film called Goud, Zweet & Parels (Gold, Sweat & Pearls) was produced by Dutch director Simone de Vries and broadcast on Dutch television. It portrays Ted Noten, his work and his philosophy:

In 2011, Noten used the large taxi driver community of the UK industrial city of Middlesbrough to promote the exhibition The Modern Jewel - In time and the mind of others at MIMA, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. He thought of working with taxi drivers after seeing the landmark bridge in the area, the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, that was celebrating its centenary. The transporter bridge operates very much like a ferry and during the lengthy crossing taxi drivers usually have nothing much else to do than to talk to their passenger(s).

In 2011, Atelier Ted Noten and UK creative company Laikingland designed a modern-day jewellery box called Lady Killer Vol. 1. It is made by 3D printing techniques and comprises a robotic arm that grabs and presents a single piece of stored jewellery. The gold-plated Lady Killer ring designed for this project has on top a miniature gun with a white and a black diamond.

In 2011, Noten also designed a white Dior 001 gun and a black Chanel 001 gun with hand-tooled 18-karat gold details, as part of a larger series entitled 7 Necessities for a Woman (to feel like a woman through the eyes of a man). The two 3D-printed nylon guns double as make-up bags with lip gloss and wand in the muzzle, the loading chamber serves as a pill compartment (complete with pills, including Viagra), 100 grams of certified silver bullion in the Dior gun clip, 50 grams of 24-karat gold in the Chanel, a toothpick and, in some models, a hairpin and a small vial of perfume. The guns also conceal a 4-gigabyte USB memory stick. Priced at US$11,500.00 (Dior gun) and over US$17,000.00 (Chanel gun) respectively.