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Dirk Schrijvers considers his career as a medical oncologist and his collection as two aspects of the same concept. “I have always been interested in becoming a doctor,” he said. “We were told that you had to help your fellow men. But I was also interested in art from a very young age, and I also bought art to help artists. ”
His interest in contemporary jewelry began after moving from the province of Limburg in Belgium to study in Antwerp in the 1980s. At that time, the hospital codes forced him to wear a tie. “When I had to examine the patients, the link returned the patient and it was not really hygienic,” explains Schrijvers, who specializes in the head and neck and genitarian cancer. Its correction was a tie pin of the Goldsmith Nadsmith Nadsmith Wijnants based in Antwerp.
Also a collector of art, design and studio glass, Schrijvers began to follow the work of jewelry students graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. If he loved a piece, he would buy it, or he would order a set of rings with blue stones (his favorite color).
Since then, his interest has passed from beautiful jewelry to more sculptural pieces, with a particular accent on the pins. However, while he used his tie pins until the hygiene rules change and completely forcing him to “jump the jewelry”, he does not wear his 300 pieces. Instead, he collects “mainly to support young people” and displays their work at home in presentation boxes. “The first thing that a piece has to do is touch me, to move,” he says. “And then it can be that it is very pleasant to look at … or that it has a message.”
Nadine Wijnants, Color Rings Series (2010)
Two hundred pieces from the Schrijvers collection are exhibited in Pin! Contemporary jewelry from AntwerpA show at the City Diva Museum until June 1. They include a series of four rings he ordered in Wijnants.
Each ring represents a different season and is inspired by the color of a sentence written by Schrijvers. After Wijnants produced a “classic” white gold and diamond ring ring for the summer, he told him to “unleash” on the rest because he would not wear them. “They don't look like rings – they are small sculptures,” he says. His favorite, the fall piece made from yellow gold and citrine, responds to her words: “The color of the sun and sand, and the one that makes my life shine in yellow”. Schrijvers says that form is “as a spiral that refers to eternity”.
Dimitar Stankov, Broch (2013)
Schrijvers met Stankov for the first time in an exhibition for students of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, where the creator of Bulgarian jewelry used vibrations of traditional Bulgarian music to move corn starch in form. He used this research to inform his pieces of metal cornet and memories, including the silver and gold spindle from Schrijvers. The doctor says that the “emotional” play incorporates gold belonging to Stankov's family.
Schrijvers continued to follow Stankov's career, but is not always taken by his creations. “The series after this one, he put lamb tripe On the pieces, “he said, adding that they were” too smelly “.
Ware Worgermans, Broch (2025)
Schrijvers ordered this brooch of Woutermaertens, a student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, after admiring her greatest works of art made of wood, concrete and steel, which he manipulates to represent decomposition. The pin uses the same materials. “His art is at the time of great importance because we all look at the mutation, where decomposition is becoming more and more (widespread),” explains Schrijvers.
Joani Groenewald, Broch (2023)
Contemporary jewelry in Antwerp became “more critical and socially committed” during its time collection, explains Schrijvers. New additions to its collection tend to carry a message. Groenewald is a creator of South African jewelry whose work he discovered during an exhibition in Antwerp. This spindle is part of its connected series that explores segregation, demarcation of land and territorialization. The resin piece looks like a link in a metal chain, which, according to Schrijvers, is a symbol of segregation and demarcation, but can also mean a “gathering”, reflecting what he says is the philosophy of Groenewald of “connection and non-confonnection”.
Peter Vermandere, “Crawler Curly with a mirror head” Brooch (2014)
The first spindle that Schrijvers bought in the 1980s was from Vermandere and he tried to buy in each of the designer's subsequent exhibitions. “He is one of (my) favorites because his jewelry is always very baroque, so it's very excessive,” explains Schrijvers. “It's still not too much, but almost too much … So it's never a simple piece.”
He likes the combination of materials – Matt Silver, hematite and shiny gold – in this room, which is part of the Vermandere I am series 2 series. Schrijvers says that he and Vermandere “grow together”, because the designer develops his “crazy ideas” and his own collection developments. It is the “thrill of research” of a jewel that leads to schrijvers. “When I have the room, something comes off,” he said, adding that stress and excitement of the pursuit disappear.
