Manchetknoop van Nederlandse zilveren munten c. 1944 - 1950

These cufflinks by A.J. Fibbe were made with Dutch silver coins, but when? And why? What kind of person takes money and melts it down and reshapes it into something new? I’m wondering if the artist, Fibbe, thought about value, and what makes something valuable. Is it the silver, the coin, or the function as a cufflink? I can imagine them carefully soldering the metal, thinking about the circles and the weight of each piece, and wondering if someone would wear them to a fancy dinner, or to a political meeting. It’s an interesting conversation, like the one painters have with color. Why does one color go next to another? Is it about tension or harmony? Maybe Fibbe asked himself that when designing the clasp, like a painter thinking about edges. It makes me consider how we assign worth to things, and how that value can change depending on who’s looking.