Jury
MARTINA LONČAR
Martina Lončar is a contemporary jewelry designer working between Ljubljana and Florence. After studying Art History in Ljubljana, she graduated in 2010 with a thesis entitled Slovenian Jewelry Designers Between 1945 and 1991. She continued her professional career in Milan and Florence, where she specialized in classical goldsmithing and trained in the studios of renowned Florentine masters, including Alessandro Dari and Marco Garezzini.
Her work is based on perfect craftsmanship, precise execution, and in-depth knowledge of both traditional and experimental techniques. This allows her the freedom of interpretation, boundless exploration, and ease in the creative process itself.
Her aesthetics stem from a dialogue between tradition and modernity, between stylistic characteristics of past eras and the unusual forms of everyday. In her collections, she intertwines contrasts between precious and recycled materials, between sophisticated forms and raw expressiveness.
She is constantly upgrading and passing on her knowledge. She first taught at Officina Nora workshop studio in Florence, later at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute – The Italian International Institute, and in recent years has been organizing workshops in collaboration with Center Rog.
Her works have been presented in numerous exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. Among others highlights is her solo exhibition Plečnik in the Mirror at the Ljubljana Town Hall. She has frequently presented her work at Ljubljana Fashion Week, Eho Studio, Cankarjev dom (as part of the O oblikovanje exhibition), and at the Museum of Architecture and Design in the exhibition Universum Plečnik: From Workshop to Myth. She has also exhibited at Galerija Fenix as part of the Architectura perennis project, in the exhibitions Star Stones – Tektites and Light Caught in Stone at the National Museum of Slovenia, in the Zakulisje project in Maribor and as part of Slovenian Jewelry Week in Slovenj Gradec. She has also exhibited at the Artstore gallery in the Crystal Palace in Ljubljana, Drat and Taktil galleries in Izola and MOTA in Ljubljana.
Internationally, she has exhibited at the History Channel exhibition at VBKÖ in Vienna, Gallery X in Bratislava, Design Without Borders in Budapest, Romanian Jewelry Week in Bucharest, Atelier Im Ersten in Vienna, the Museum Arnhem, and the Fillo Rosso exhibition in Muggia. In Milan, she exhibited in collaboration with Terre di mezzo platform, and in Florence, she participated in the Jewellery Selection exhibition at Museo Bellini, in the group exhibition Bottega Orafa at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, held a solo exhibition at the Ex Grege studio and exhibited several times at the Officina Nora Coworking space. Her most important presentations include her participation in the Florence Design Week, a presentation at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, participation in the Gustav Klimt – Pictorial Preciousness exhibition at Nobil Collegio degli Orafi in Rome and the New Traditional Jewellery exhibition at the SIERAAD Art Fair in Amsterdam. She has participated in Slovenian Jewelry Week several times, where in 2023 she received the award for best designer.
PETRA BOLE
Petra Bole has worked as a lecturer, artist, designer, writer, curator and editor, and is currently the Director of the Museums of the Radovljica Municipality.
She was an associate professor at the Faculty of Design in Slovenia, where she was a head of Department of Product Design and served as Vice-Dean for Creative Activities.
Petra has a degree in architecture (Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana), jewelry (MA, London Metropolitan University) and humanities (PhD in Philosophy and Theory of Visual Culture at the Faculty of Humanities Koper–Capodistria, University of Primorska). She graduated from the School of Curators World of Art, the School of Curatorial Practices and Critical Writing, and obtained the professional title of Curator at the Ministry of Culture.
She has exhibited in over 100 exhibitions, including in Italy, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, the United Kingdom, Spain, Serbia and Colombia. She has also participated in the organization of many projects such as BREAK 21, BIO 19, GIDE – Group for International Design Education, round tables on contemporary jewelry and design management… as part of the Bilateral Focus and Bilateral DOS exhibitions.
She was the founder and president of the Slovenian Association of Contemporary Jewelry (2003–2015), and since 2013, she has been the president of the Unique Design Section at the Designers Society of Slovenia (DOS).
In the field of academic research, she has participated in numerous international conferences, co-edited several publications, and mentored bachelor's and master's theses in the field of design.
Her doctoral dissertation focuses on jewelry as art, exploring various artistic theories and philosophical and sociological aspects of artistic jewelry. She is the author of the book Jewelry as Art: Short Reflections on Art Jewelry, and numerous other articles on jewelry, art, and design.
Having fallen in love with bees, Petra became a beekeeper and a member of the Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association in 2020. She is the curator and author of the new permanent exhibition at the Beekeeping Museum and the wonderful book Living Together: About Bees and People (Skupaj živeti. O čebelah in človeku).
She is currently the director of the Museums of the Radovljica Municipality, where she is responsible for the operations of five museum units.
TANJA PAK
Tanja Pak holds a Master of Arts degree from the Royal College of Art in London, after completing her studies in industrial design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO), University of Ljubljana. She works as a full professor at the Academy, and since 2009 she has been the head of the Glass and Ceramics Department, which she co-created and established as an independent program. Her work encompasses sculpture, spatial installations and the design of glass objects, and in all segments, she is dedicated to complex glass processing techniques, the exploration of materiality and subtle spatial connections between light, surface and viewer.
Her artistic practice is closely connected to the exploration of silence, solitude and the fragility of the human experience. In her works, she focuses on the sensitivity of interpersonal bonds, the elusiveness of inner states and the transition between closeness and distance. She understands glass as an ideal medium for expressing vulnerability, transience and fragility of existence, which she realizes with exceptional precision, technical virtuosity and a multimedia approach.
She has received numerous international awards for her work, including the Grand Prize at the Toyama International Glass Exhibition 2024, the Designer of the Year award, two international Red Dot Honorable Mentions awards and the Arte Laguna Prize. Her work has been included in the international publication New Glass Review four times and has been shortlisted several times at important world exhibitions of contemporary glass, including in Kanazawa, Bornholm and Toyama. Her extensive residency portfolio includes guest appearances at the Corning Museum of Glass, Creative Glass Center of America, Pilchuck Glass School, Musée du Verre and numerous other institutions across Europe, the USA and Africa.
She regularly presents her work internationally. She has had solo exhibitions in Mauritius, Italy, France and at numerous exhibition venues in Florence. In Slovenia, she has exhibited at Ljubljana Castle, the Križevniška Church, Velenje Gallery, the TR3 Gallery, the Atelje Gallery and the Glesia Gallery, among others. Through exhibitions such as Rêveries, Breath, Passages, Inter-breath and Stories of Breath, she has developed a distinctly personal poetics that connects meditative spatial installations with subtle glass compositions.
She has participated in numerous prestigious international group exhibitions, including Venice Glass Week, Somerset House – Collect, Arte Laguna Prize in Venice, European Glass Context in Denmark, Glass Art Society exhibitions, Vitraria Museum in Venice, Bullseye Project exhibitions in the USA, the International Symposium in Novy Bor, and international selections organized in Berlin, Łódź, Legnica, Zagreb, Milan, and Moscow. Her work has also been presented within the projects Silent Revolutions – Contemporary Design in Slovenia, Design+, Tunnel 29, Beauty and His Beast, and other curated installations that place Slovenian creativity in a broader European and global context.
Her works are part of numerous public and private collections worldwide. These include the Toyama Glass Museum in Japan, art collections in Slovenia (Galerija Velenje, Anin Dvor, Riko, ALUO, Lah Art Foundation), the collection of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, the Prague Museum of Art and Industry, and numerous private collections in Brussels, Wroclaw, Ljubljana, and the USA. In public spaces, her spatial installations are located in the Ljubljana Castle, the National Museum of Slovenia, Thermana Laško, and other public institutions.
As a lecturer and speaker at international conferences, she has collaborated with institutions such as the Iceland University of the Arts, Royal College of Art, Urban Glass in New York, Corning Museum of Glass, BeCon Conference in Portland, Glass Society of Ireland, Coburg Glass Symposium and numerous European design platforms. She regularly lectures on contemporary glass, materiality and spatial poetics.
She is a member of the Glass Art Society, the Royal College of Art alumni network and the Chevening Alumni Alliance. She also works as an external evaluator for quality in higher education in Slovenia, Ireland and Croatia. Her work combines technical mastery, academic rigor and a distinctly personal artistic language, establishing her as one of the most prominent contemporary glass artists in Slovenia and beyond.
NICHKA MAROBIN
Nichka Marobin is an Italian art historian specializing in Dutch and Flemish art. She graduated from the Faculty of Letters in Padua, where in her thesis she discussed Renaissance ornamental prints between 1500 and 1550 in Germany and the Netherlands, with a focus on the transfer of forms, themes and styles in the works of Cornelis Bos, Cornelis Floris II, Lucas van Leyden and the German "Little Masters."
In 2011, she founded The Morning Bark, an online blogzine covering arts and humanities, where she publishes articles about art from a multidisciplinary approach that includes fine art, books, fashion and contemporary jewelry.
In 2014, she started the project Les Métissages, in which she develops the concept of the migration of forms and ideas by putting contemporary jewelry and fashion creations in dialogue and exploring their connections and parallels.
In 2015, she began working as an independent curator. Since then, she has curated exhibitions at JOYA BARCELONA (2015), at the Museu del Modernisme (2016) and at the Hannah Gallery Barcelona (2017, 2019, 2022, 2024), all in Barcelona.
She collaborates with KLIMT02 and Art Jewellery Forum, two of the world’s leading contemporary jewellery platforms. She is a member of the AJF Ambassador Program for contemporary jewelry in Italy. Since 2009, she has been an active member of AGC, the Italian Association for Contemporary Jewelry. She is also a passionate collector of contemporary jewelry.
She founded The Blue Room – Hub for Brilliant Conversations, a new curatorial space dedicated to art and artists.
Website: www.themorningbark.wordpress.com
Instagram: @the_random_curator · @the_blue_room_hub · @themorningbark · @people_of_contemporary_jewelry
Facebook: The Morning Bark
OLGA KOŠICA
Olga Košica is the founder and head of Slovenian Jewelry Week (SIJW), where she has been working as the director of the SIAJ Institute since 2021. She is a curator, organizer, selector and mentor. Within SIJW, she designs the program, leads the jury and connects the domestic and international community of contemporary jewelry designers.
After graduating in Textile and Clothing Design from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, University of Ljubljana, she earned a master’s degree in Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery from the Royal College of Art in London.
She has received a number of awards for her creative work, including finalist status in the international IGI Expressions competition (2022), the Designers Society of Slovenia Award for the OfR project (2018), the Elle Style Award for Best Accessories Designer (2014), the British Council Young Creative Fashion Entrepreneur Award (2012), the Trend Award (2005 and 2006), and the Onno Boekhoudt Memorial Award, Matthew Wrighton Award, and Ray Watson Award. In 2003, she received a Rotary Club scholarship.
As a designer, she has been collaborating with Zlatarna Celje under the Lencia brand for a long time, and at the same time she runs her own studio of unique jewelry in Ljubljana. With Rok Marinšek, she co-creates the OfR brand, which is regularly presented at Paris Fashion Week.
She is also intensively involved in mentorship and education – she established a jewelry laboratory at Center Rog and has lectured at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, the College of Design and other institutions at home and abroad. She participates in juries, expert panels and international programs such as the WORTH Partnership (Jewelry Visions). She regularly presents her work internationally, including at the New York Jewelry Week (NYCJW).
Her collections and projects have been presented in many cities around the globe, including Paris, London, Hong Kong, Berlin, Sydney, Istanbul, Košice, Trieste, Graz and Ljubljana. Recent notable projects include the management and curation of SIJW (2022–2025), inclusion in the book New Earrings (2024), professional collaborations with design faculties and presentations at fashion weeks.
Her work appears in many prestigious publications, such as Vogue China, Harper’s Bazaar, Glass Magazine, W Magazine, Trend Book and Slovenian fashion magazines. She has also published professional texts, including for Findings – Association for Contemporary Jewellery UK and Alkimiya Magazine. Also, she has edited the catalogue Contemporary Slovenian and Dutch Jewelry.
GIÒ CARBONE
Giò Carbone is a pioneer, educator, curator and leading expert in the field of goldsmithing and contemporary jewelry, with over forty years of international experience. He is the founder and director of the Le Arti Orafe (LAO) goldsmithing school in Florence, one of leading European educational institutions dedicated to goldsmithing, jewelry design and professional training, where he continues to teach advanced goldsmithing workshops.
Carbone is the creator and long-time coordinator of the PREZIOSA project, now known as Florence Jewellery Week, an important international platform for the promotion, exhibition and critical discussion of contemporary jewelry. Since 2008, he has also directed PREZIOSA YOUNG, an international competition that has become a key springboard for emerging jewelry artists worldwide.
His expertise includes institutional management, curriculum development, international project coordination, and the integration of traditional goldsmithing techniques with contemporary artistic research. In addition to his educational and curatorial work, he has acted as a consultant for small and medium-sized jewelry companies, as well as for government and international bodies, contributing to feasibility studies, professional training programs, and technological development initiatives across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
Giò Carbone is active in European cultural and educational policy in the field of craftsmanship, including as a leading member of the European Parliament of Goldsmith Schools and a coordinator of EU-funded projects. He is a frequent guest lecturer at prestigious art and design institutions around the world and has received several awards for his contribution to the promotion of contemporary jewelry and goldsmithing culture.
ARATA FUCHI
Arata Fuchi, born in 1975 in Japan, is an internationally acclaimed creator of contemporary art jewelry. He studied Industrial Design at Tokyo Zokei University, graduating in 1999, and then worked in the design department of a watch and jewelry company in Tokyo until 2003. In 2005, he obtained a professional goldsmith qualification at the Le Arti Orafe school in Florence, which is recognized by the Italian region of Tuscany, and continued his practical training there for a year. After a period of creating in Japan, he returned to Florence in 2009, where he continued to develop his original jewelry.
Since 2006, his work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including Munich, Birmingham, Łódź, Tallinn, Matosinhos, Tokyo, Apeldoorn, Milan, London, Porto, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Chicago, New York, and across Canada, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Spain, South Korea, China and Slovenia. He regularly participates in prestigious platforms such as JOYA Barcelona, Sieraad Amsterdam, SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York, and exhibits in galleries such as Mobilia Gallery, Aaron Faber Gallery, Hannah Gallery and many others. His solo and group presentations include participation in Florence Jewellery Week, the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, New York City Jewelry Week and exhibitions focusing on contemporary jewelry, the relationship between form and materiality, nature, architecture, symbolism and modern interpretations of traditional jewelry.
He is also very active in contemporary jewelry competitions, where his work has been recognized and awarded by international experts. He has participated in contests such as the Inhorgenta Europe Design Podium, International Silverart Competition, Itami International Craft Exhibition, SIERAAD Award, Amberif Design Award, BKV Prize and Mario Pinton Award. In 2022 he received the Public Choice Award at the In Fieri exhibition in Belgium, and in 2024 he received the first prize for experimental contemporary jewelry at the Premio Incinque Jewels in Rome.
His work has been published in numerous professional publications, including magazines Schmuck Magazin, Vogue Gioiello, Fashion Italia, Metalsmith, Contemporary Jewellery Yearbook, Jewel Book, and books such as Dreaming Jewelry, New Rings: 500+ Designs from Around the World, New Earrings: 500+ Contemporary Jewellery Designs, Contemporary Craft in Japan, Rings of the 20th and 21st Centuries, and ALBA LONGA.
A wide range of publications since 2006 confirm his recognition in the international contemporary jewelry sphere.
Arata Fuchi’s works are held in prominent public and private collections. These include the Olnick Spanu Collection and the prestigious Alice and Louis Koch Collection. His jewelry is part of the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the Spencer Museum of Art in Kansas, the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas and the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne.
SELECTION CRITERIA FOR THE SLOVENIAN JEWELRY WEEK 2026
Jury Statements
Martina Lončar:
“This year, I was entrusted with the extremely responsible and at the same time honourable task of forming the national and international jury and chairing its work. The open call received a large number of applications with a high level of content and execution, which demonstrated a profound conceptual depth and technical sophistication. This high standard made the selection of exhibitors, and especially the award winners, significantly more difficult. The deciding criteria for our selection were based on the originality of the idea, the quality of execution, the conceptual integrity of the project and innovation in the exploration of materials, with special emphasis on the clarity of the artistic concept and its convincing realization.”
Nichka Marobin:
“Selecting and evaluating the work in the jewelry competition is both a privilege and a challenge. This process involves an open exploration of diverse areas of research projects and languages of jewerly. As a juror for this years’ edition of the Slovenian Jewelry Week (SJW), I focused primarily on techniques, examining new media and materials, ranging from traditional methods to AI-generated collaborations. The result is a rich set of styles that derive from both traditional craft techniques and contemporary media, including dialogues between collaborating artists.”
Arata Fuchi:
“I am sincerely grateful to all the participants for their dedication and the insights they share through their works. When selecting for this project, I first focused on works that were completely new to me or something I had never seen before, and on their identity and originality. I then selected those works that explored materials in depth and achieved results that were completely in line with the concept.”