Current Obsession Paper for Munich Jewellery Week 2026
This year, we tilt the spotlight towards Japan.
Welcome to the 2026 edition of Current Obsession Paper for Munich Jewellery Week!
In 2025, with Aotearoa New Zealand as guest focus, we began shifting the editorial centre of gravity – opening Munich Jewellery Week to voices and material philosophies that do not always sit at the heart of the European conversation. In 2026, we continue that movement. And the beam turns east.
In collaboration with Guest Editor Makiko Akiyama – Tokyo-based writer, lecturer and long-time observer of the field – this edition explores the layered histories and contemporary urgencies of Japanese jewellery. From the post-war emergence of jewellery as an independent artistic practice to today’s quietly radical makers, this issue surveys influential artists, thinkers and teachers shaping the field today, while revisiting the historical conditions that made this evolution possible.
What happens when these histories meet Munich’s exuberant, decentralised stage?
Consider this paper as an invitation into dialogue. To widen the beam. To notice what has been unfolding in parallel all along.
The MJW Paper is your printed window into the world of jewellery. Not just a guide to the festival but a documentation of contemporary jewellery far beyond Munich – capturing conversations, ideas, and movements from across the globe.
Pre-sales note: Your copy of the MJW 2026 paper will be shipped between weeks 9 and 11. We appreciate your patience.
- 1. Our guest editor Makiko Akiyama introduces this papers theme uteba hibiku (打てば響く). This phrase is often used to describe someone who is quick and responsive. But taken literally, it suggests that when something is struck, a resonance is stirred.
- 2. Inscribed in the Body: Two Schools, One Tactile Lineage – featuring Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry and Kobe Design University - traces how skills and philosophies formed through the senses are transformed, once again through the hands, into tangible form.
- 3. Scottish artist and metal worker, Kathleen Reilly, now based in Tokyo, turns a critical gaze on the Japanese craft scene as a whole. Drawing on personal experience, they identify its challenges and propose potential paths forward.
- 4. Artist and designer Sae Honda turns to the work of fellow artist Taiichiro Yoshida, finding in the fluctuations produced by error an appeal to bodily sensation. Through this perspective, she questions the contemporary relevance of handcraft.
- 5. The work of jeweller Shinji Nakaba illuminates what it truly means to unsettle tradition, revealing the underlying forces of beauty and desire that drive such an act.
- 6. Emerging writer Yurie Hayashi, through a closely observed account of artist Moto Nakaba’s practice, shows how one talent, when passed to another, can unfold into a vast, magnifying expanse.
- 7. In conversation with Tomomi Miyagawa, curator at the Curator at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto we delve into the upcoming survey exhibition Creating Japanese Jewellery: Personal Expression and Memory
- 8. + a ton of gorgeous spreads from this year's MJW participants, hot tips on what to see in the recurring PULSE section, and more!
Original price was: € 20,00.€ 18,00Current price is: € 18,00.