Hilbert's jewellery celebrated the ambiguities of modest and clear from. It embodies a perception of jewellery as a language - almost Masonic, addressing a privileged circle of private signs and takes, which are to be recognized and yet remain quite enigmatic. The pieces are simply made, yet with the assurance of a technical command which can undermine or conceal, their complexity.
Prof. David Watkins
"Therese Hilbert has drawn on [many] sources of inspiration but above all, she has developed a language of forms distinctively her own. One might say, perhaps, that it has grown sequentially on the exceptionally rich topsoil of her artistic beginnings and has been distilled out of them as sharp as lance tips in a highly individual expression. And that is how her jewellery often looks: clearly and stringently constructed entities of matte or sulphurised anthracite-coloured silver (Hilbert’s material of choice) – cut in ovals, circles or conical pointed figures. Smooth, sensuously seductive surfaces stretch like a skin round an inner life that somewhere or other unexpectedly swells, flickers forth or even erupts tellingly to reveal the energy latent in it. It is no coincidence that Hilbert has been preoccupied for years with the theme of ‘emotions’. It is no secret that the consummate metaphor for them is the volcano as a natural phenomenon. The Swiss jewellery artist is passionate about volcanoes and has become an expert on them, having climbed personally many of them. The works shown here have grown out of this passion: jewellery casings informed by a consistently geometric cogency and abstract calculation of form are united with delicate yet disturbing inclusions of colour and unusual, occasionally defamiliarised elements that erupt from the quiet, disciplined vessel bodies to make more room for themselves."
Dr Ellen Maurer Zilioli, Italy