Description:

Hook Hand Heart Star coincides with jeweller Warwick Freeman’s survey exhibition at Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum in Munich, later traveling to Objectspace in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in November 2025. Objectspace led content development for the accompanying monograph, while Inhouse crafted its design identity. Published by arnoldsche Art Publishers, this is the most comprehensive publication on Freeman’s work. It records the retrospective, celebrates his craft and influence in international jewellery, and makes his practice accessible to a broader audience.

Hook Hand Heart Star captures the curatorial methodology behind the titular exhibition – dividing Freeman’s emblematic jewellery oeuvre into sign-based categories through physical layout and chapter formatting. As seen in the physical exhibition, this companion monograph challenges museum conventions of chronological organisation, instead building a bold, innovative index of objects led by the artists own thematic groupings.

The design foregrounds Freeman’s work as the hero by featuring mostly full-bleed photographs of each piece, letting the jewellery’s craftsmanship speak for itself. To echo Freeman’s typographic experiments with gaffa tape, a bespoke typeface was created for headings and chapter markers—reinforcing the artist’s hands-on ethos.
Setting dual-language (English/German) essays introduced twice the text, so layouts were carefully calibrated to provide “breathing room” without overwhelming the imagery. Coloured grounds demarcate the thematic “departments”, guiding readers through sign-based categories rather than a linear chronology.

Hook Hand Heart Star is a product of exceptionally thorough, dedicated research on the work of Warwick Freeman. It heralds a first for Aotearoa jewellery in its breadth and international audience. In the making of this book, an exhaustive archive of objects produced by Freeman across five decades was systematically combed, with hundreds of works carefully reviewed and considered; resulting in a highly concentrated selection of objects and images that capture the essense of Freeman’s practice. Throughout his career Freeman has never tired of exploring what it means to make jewellery in Aotearoa New Zealand – Hook Hand Heart Star eloquently shares his intrepid creative practice with both national and international audiences.