The Jewellery–Linking Bodies department is looking forward to hosting Robert Pytlos, who will introduce Baltic amber to the JLB students on Thursday, 23 April.
Why is natural raw Baltic amber known as the noble resin, and what distinguishes it from the hundred other fossil resins? In this special workshop, participants will learn about amber as a jewelry and ornamental material, its properties and history and the basic methods for its manual processing.
The workshop is implemented within the framework of the project Gdansk – the world capital of amber.
Robert Pytlos, coordinator of the Mayor of the City of Gdansk responsible for 19 years for the project Gdansk – the world capital of amber, journeyman in the craft of amber working, long-time secretary of the World Amber Council, awarded the Amber Circle Medal of the International Amber Association, honorary member of the National Amber Chamber of Commerce, awarded the Honorary Badge of the Association of Polish Crafts, author of article entries about Baltic amber and amber industry in the Gedanopedia (Gdańsk Encyclopedia), lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Gdańsk, Poland.
You are invited to a special event with Chun Chang & Hatutamelen organised by the Francoise van den Bosch Foundation and Jewellery–Linking Bodies department.
Chun Chang & Hatutamelen Talks & Dialogue series 5-8pm, Thursday, 2 April Theory Stairs, Gerrit Rietveld Academy **in collaboration with the Francoise van den Bosch Foundation**
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In 2026, Chun Chang is the recipient of the Françoise van den Bosch residency in Amsterdam. Named after the jewellery designer Françoise van den Bosch, the Foundation was conceived in 1980 by prominent members of the Dutch progressive jewellery community and members of her family. Its aim is to stimulate and promote contemporary jewellery. While in residence, Chun Chang is exploring the potential of wood carving as a language for contemporary jewellery and small-scale sculpture. Inspired by Japanese netsuke, Chun is interested in how functional forms become cultural carriers, and how this idea can be reinterpreted today.
Chun Chang, Power House#1
To celebrate, Rietveld is teaming up with FvdB once more to present an evening of Talks & Dialogue. The evening will culminate with a festive borrel.
For the talk, Chun Chang will elaborate on her jewellery and sculptural practice, with a focus on her recent graduation works and her research on the concept of containers. The artist Hatutamelen will join us to discuss his project “Revival of Moluccan Symbolism & Woodcarving”, in which he carried out museum collection research into Moluccan wooden ornamental combs, bamboo lime containers, and the motifs carved into them. Inspired by these objects, he created his own wooden and ceramic jewelry in which stories, knowledge and wisdom live on.
Chun Chang, work developed during the Françoise van den Bosch residency
In Amsterdam, Chun is also researching museum collections, focusing on objects that reveal histories of cross-cultural exchange, such as netsuke. Her work looks at how functional forms become cultural carriers, and how this idea can be reinterpreted today. The presence of Asian artefacts in Dutch collections, shaped by trade and contact, provides a framework for her investigation.
Chun Chang, portrait
Chun Chang is a Taiwanese artist based in Germany. She received her MFA in Gemstones and Jewellery from Hochschule Trier, Campus Idar-Oberstein, and a BA in Jewellery from Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. She was awarded the Marzee Graduate Prize in 2025 and is the 2026 artist-in-residence at the Françoise van den Bosch Foundation in Amsterdam. https://www.instagram.com/loosesoap/
Hatutamelen, portrait
Hatutamelen, a pseudonym for James Noya, is of Moluccan-Dutch descent. He began his artistic practice with woodcarving and building Moluccan tifa drums. He has developed his skills in several disciplines, such as linoleum printing, painting, and wood and ceramic jewellery- and sculptural practice. https://hatutamelen.com/
Art as Relational Infrastructures 2026, Sonja Bäumel and Sonia Kazovsky
Evolving from Biome Nest (2024) and The Magic of Jewellery (2025), Sonja Bäumel and Sonia Kazovsky continued their long-term exploration of relational infrastructures with Puppetry as a Stage for Love, approaching art and design education as a platform for political and social engagement with local life. The project investigated how inter- and transdisciplinary artistic practices can operate as meaningful forms of participation, encouraging students to engage with society through collective making, shared responsibility and by approaching artistic education as a situated civic practice in which learning unfolds through participation.
Developed in dialogue with the Amsterdam Oost neighbourhood organisation Dynamo and linked to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s Studium Generale theme of Love as a Practice, the project approached puppetry as a stage for embodied knowledge and collective narration. Working with simple materials and accessible techniques, participants built figures that could hold voices, gestures and stories. Puppetry functioned as a relational device in which participants could rehearse forms of care, attention and mutual listening through making and storytelling. It simultaneously opened up a space for different voices to emerge via collective play and narration.
Rooted in the Jewellery – Linking Bodies department, the pilot project was open to students from all departments of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie as well as participants from the Dynamo community in Amsterdam Oost. The workshops centred on the joy of making together while cultivating collective responsibility through skill-sharing, storytelling, and small performative situations that foregrounded collaborative learning and the sharing of knowledge across different experiences and backgrounds.
The collaboration with Dynamo also introduced students to the local welfare infrastructure of Amsterdam Oost and the social fabric that sustains it. For international students in particular it was an opportunity to engage with the city beyond the academy as well as with existing neighbourhood networks through artistic exchange. In the workshops, participants encountered how cultural and social infrastructures are sustained via local forms of everyday life. At the same time, the project opened the Gerrit Rietveld Academie as a space of encounter for residents of Amsterdam Oost, allowing participants from the neighbourhood to enter the academy and take part in collective making alongside students.
The process treated making as a relational practice. Puppets became intermediaries through which participants could speak, listen, and imagine together, creating temporary infrastructures of exchange between the academy and the local life and enabling participants in social forms that previously might not have been familiar or even accessible to them.
The workshops culminated in a puppetry theatre performance at the Pavilion at the Rietveld Academie, bringing the process to a joyful, public close.
