What happens when luxury stops chasing only diamonds and starts collecting roots, circuit boards, resin, titanium and memory? Find out at MAD About Jewelry 2026!
What happens when luxury stops chasing only diamonds and starts collecting roots, circuit boards, resin, titanium and memory? Find out at MAD About Jewelry 2026!
May 5, 2026
At the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, MAD About Jewelry 2026 is not behaving like a polite jewelry fair. It is a benefit, a curated sale, a collector’s playground and, most importantly, a laboratory for what luxury becomes after the old rules start looking tired. Running from May 5 to May 9, 2026, the 26th edition brings together 45 artists from more than 20 countries, selected under the direction of Bryna Pomp.
In a market still fluent in carat weight, heritage logos and gemstone scarcity, MAD About Jewelry shifts the question from “How rare is it?” to “How radical is the idea?” The event’s meet-the-maker format gives collectors direct access to the artists behind the work, turning purchase into conversation and adornment into biography. Here, a necklace can carry process, politics, memory and material experimentation at once.
The real game changer is material. Na Yuri works with hand-cut roots, painted surfaces, brass-wire seeds and resin, creating pieces that feel grown, gathered and philosophically worn. Klára Šípková has continuously challenged conventional definitions of jewelry through the use of unconventional materials such as stainless steel, titanium, and Barrisol, combined with traditional goldsmithing techniques.
Fatma Mostafa uses embroidery to paint the adornments, her jewelry transforms vibrant threads into tactile compositions that honor nature, memory, and the quiet discipline of skilled hands.
Javier Ens is driven by an interest in natural processes, material transformation, and sustained experimentation. Through research-led casting methods, Ens combines different metals to produce polymetals, hybrid materials with singular structural and visual qualities. These materials become the basis for jewelry that negotiates tension between chaos and order, the organic and the artificial.
Collector psychology is changing too. MAD About Jewelry 2026’s Acquisition Prize allows selected work to enter the museum’s permanent collection, turning contemporary jewelry from beautiful possession into cultural preservation. For a younger luxury audience, that is the new thrill: not owning a status symbol, but acquiring a future artifact.
At MAD About Jewelry 2026, the jewel is no longer merely precious. It is argumentative, intimate, strange and alive. Luxury has found its fresh start, and it comes with roots, circuits and a very sharp point of view.
