Kobi Bosshard
| Kobi Bosshard | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Kobi Bosshard 1939 Uster, Switzerland |
| Known for | Jewellery, goldsmith, silversmith |
Kobi Bosshard (born 1939 in Uster, Switzerland) is a Swiss-born New Zealand jeweller. Bosshard was one of a number of European-trained jewellers who came to New Zealand in the 1960s and transformed contemporary jewellery in the country; others include Jens Hoyer Hansen, Tanya Ashken and Gunter Taemmler.
Bosshard undertook a five-year apprenticeship in Zurich with jewellery designer and craftsman Meinrad Burch-Korrodi, and studied at the Zurich School of Applied Arts.
Bosshard moved to New Zealand in 1961.
He worked briefly in a Wellington jewellery shop owned by a fellow Swiss jeweller after arriving in New Zealand, but found the work being done in the shop conservative and left after a brief time. He became a mountain guide, then returned to full-time jewellery making in 1966.
Art historian Peter Cape wrote in a 1969 survey of craft in New Zealand:
Kobi Bosshard has exhibited in a number of exhibition throughout New Zealand, and sells his work regularly through craft and jewellers’ shops. He feels that, as a craft jeweller, he has considerable advantage over commercial jewellers, in that he is independent, and can design and work where and when he pleases, developing and following out his own idea, without the pressures of a mass market.
In 1970 Bosshard's work was included in Silver, Gold, Greenstone at New Vision Gallery in Auckland, the first substantial exhibition of contemporary jewellery in New Zealand. In 1972 he was included in Craft 72, an exhibition of New Zealand potters, weavers, wood-turners and jewellers organised by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and toured overseas through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In a 1985 interview Bosshard described his preference for using a limited number of machines in his jewellery making and avoiding pre-cut metals: 'If you buy pieces of silver cut to standard thicknesses, you are tempted to stay with those measurements. It's better to have fewer skills and be master of those than to have many techniques and end up working to formula'. In the same interview he said:
I have to make a piece of jewellery before I know what it looks like. My hands and material know what they are doing: the jewellery has to feel right or it's not successful. I try not to let my mind get in the way. I don't want to end up thinking I am smart and clever and using tricks.
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