Towards the end of the sixties, European designers and makers of jewellery were going through a very bad patch, but this did not deter Christa Lühtje, for she had no wish to give up everything and start afresh. A brief excursion into the realm of plastics was all she allowed herself. The pieces which she submitted for a jewellery exhibition in the Albrecht Dürer Year 1971 already manifested the quality she was striving to achieve: sheer clarity of line and form – gold combined with only a few semiprecious
stones, either rock crystal or jade. Of extreme beauty and lightness, they expressed an optimum mechanical solution which was never in any way pretentious. Much was called in question at that time, but the thought of being purely experimental and nothing else, and running the risk of being banal as well, seemed unbearable to her.
A not insignificant turning point in her career was her participation in the Hamburg Christmas Fair in 1965. In the first place, she discovered the works of the ceramic artist Bontjes van Beek, who was to make a lasting impression on her; and then she suddenly found herself being measured against other participating goldsmiths, such as Wolfgang Tümpel and Herbert Zeitner, whose names were already legendary, and she was successful, too. The director of the Christmas Fair, Heinz Spielmann, otherwise famous as an art and architectural historian, was immediately attracted to her work, as were the many architects in Hamburg who still count among her loyal customers today. Her circle of customers – and, by the same token, recognition of her work – grew over the years. In 1967, she received the Prize of the Hamburg Senate, and in 1972 the Bavarian State Prize – one year after Ariana Giacchi, in a review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, had described her as one of Germany's greatest post-war talents.
Christa Lühtje’s life and work as a goldsmith during the two decades that followed were spent away from all the theoretical debates that had such a strong influence on jewellery design at that time. Like her teacher, Franz Rickert, she distrusted theory, especially when it outweighed practice. Because she was still working in gold, her opportunities of exhibiting in Munich had become fewer and fewer, but this was something she just had to accept
stones, either rock crystal or jade. Of extreme beauty and lightness, they expressed an optimum mechanical solution which was never in any way pretentious. Much was called in question at that time, but the thought of being purely experimental and nothing else, and running the risk of being banal as well, seemed unbearable to her.
A not insignificant turning point in her career was her participation in the Hamburg Christmas Fair in 1965. In the first place, she discovered the works of the ceramic artist Bontjes van Beek, who was to make a lasting impression on her; and then she suddenly found herself being measured against other participating goldsmiths, such as Wolfgang Tümpel and Herbert Zeitner, whose names were already legendary, and she was successful, too. The director of the Christmas Fair, Heinz Spielmann, otherwise famous as an art and architectural historian, was immediately attracted to her work, as were the many architects in Hamburg who still count among her loyal customers today. Her circle of customers – and, by the same token, recognition of her work – grew over the years. In 1967, she received the Prize of the Hamburg Senate, and in 1972 the Bavarian State Prize – one year after Ariana Giacchi, in a review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, had described her as one of Germany's greatest post-war talents.
Christa Lühtje’s life and work as a goldsmith during the two decades that followed were spent away from all the theoretical debates that had such a strong influence on jewellery design at that time. Like her teacher, Franz Rickert, she distrusted theory, especially when it outweighed practice. Because she was still working in gold, her opportunities of exhibiting in Munich had become fewer and fewer, but this was something she just had to accept
