I was trawling through either Pinterest or Instagram recently (I can’t remember which) and came across some very beautiful, Scandi-looking, brutalist jewellery. It turns out that it was made by a company called Kordes & Lichtenfels. Despite finding extensive examples of their designs online (not all mid-century modernist in design as the ones we’ve chosen to highlight above), there’s sketchy information available about the company or its jewellery designers.
Founded in Germany in 1884 and based in the famed jewellery-making centre of Pforzheim, Kordes & Lichtenfels were manufacturers of deluxe jewellery fashioned from gold, silver and rolled gold with semi-precious stones. In the 1970s, the company evolved into Merz Export GmbH and, from 2017, another company Andreas Daub took over the production.
There are lots of pieces of Kordes & Lichtenfels jewellery available for sale on eBay and Etsy.