Opening The Treasure Chest
A Master Craftsman Creates Works of Art in Precious Metals
Dóra Guðbjört Jónsdóttir is one of Iceland’s finest and most productive goldsmiths using, with great understanding, the ways of Icelandic masters before her time. Between 1949-53, Dóra started learning the trade at her father’s workshop, gaining her Master’s degree in 1953. Additionally, she studied at Tärna folk high school in Sweden, Konstfackskolan in Stockholm around 1950, graduating with honours and at Vereinigte Goldschmiede-, Kunst- und Werkschule in Pforzheim, Germany in 1954.
Dóra took over her father’s workshop in 1970 and relocated it, opening her company called Gullkistan, on Frakkastígur street in Reykjavík. Her expertise is national costume jewellery, or filigree, a delicate kind of jewellery metalwork, usually of gold and silver. Outstanding skills can be seen in her superb work, honouring Icelandic tradition. Dóra likes to work with very old jewellery templates, often well over 100 years old.
She has always actively participated in exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and served as a chairman of the FIG (Icelandic Goldsmiths Foundation) from 1974-75, being the first Nordic woman to take that position. A true artist, she has always striven to put national crafts in a new context and associate her designs with modern trends which combine the artist’s desire to experiment with a thorough knowledge of templates and patterns of the past.
