GERDA FLÖCKINGER (b. 1927)

Gerda Flöckinger, a British artist and jeweler, was born in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1927, and immigrated to London in 1938.

Flöckinger studied painting at St. Martin’s School of Art and later etching, enameling, and jewelry at Central School of Art and Design. In the 1950s, she set up her own London jewelry studio. In 1962, she became a professor at Hornsey College, where she established an experimental jewelry course.

Flöckinger’s rings are some of her most iconic designs. The flat polished surfaces of Flöckinger’s early jewelry have been abandoned for encrusted, organic textures that have come to typify her work. Large, unusual stones—cameos, soft-colored cabochons, veined turquoises, and irregular pearls—were combined with her unusually textured high-karat gold and sterling silver settings.

In 1971, Flöckinger became the first female and first living jeweler to have a solo exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1991, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the title CBE for her contribution to the arts. Flöckinger’s work resides in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Royal Scottish Museum, among many others.

Read more about Gerda Flöckinger and her contemporaries in our catalog London Originals, available for sale here.