"Flowing, floral, fanned out like wings, colourful and fragile in a fluttery way – these are the ways the jewels of Lydia Hirte appear. Beautiful, but also stable? It seems that Lydia Hirte did already hear this question too often because she answers slightly irritated: `Look, they are under considerable strain.´ In fact, beyond pure appearances it is appropriate to substitute `inherently stable´ and `firm´ for the term `fragile´. The `charisma´ of the paper pendants arises from an antagonism taking shape: though the jewels appear airy and flowing on first inspection, once touched – initially almost coyly – they turn out to be a hardly manipulable bundle full of physical strain powerfully resisting the pressure imposed upon it by the fingers.
     Paper is a viscous and flexible material which only becomes crumbly and brittle when ageing. Physicists and conservators evaluate its state by characteristics like modulus of bending rapture, fold number and tear resistance. They perform mechanical tests where they bend and fold the paper until it bursts. Lydia Hirte also forces the paper to the limit of toughness. But she is doing this in an artistically intuitive way. Her basic material are stacked flat and rolling stripes of fine drawing board. The artists uses felt-pens to colour the edges and, newly, also the surfaces of the basic shapes.
     Lydia Hirte's concern is to provoke resistance of the material. This can be sensed not only when touching the jewels. One of her own texts on her way of working is like a description of a battle: `I catch the bundle. I force sections into the foreground which are pointing to the background, I force the end of shapes from different positions into the same plane, I bend the bundle sharply downwards, before continuing with a movement upwards, I pull the bundles apart, I add a sharp change of direction, I use colours which makes clear the positions and the run of the shapes...´
     Hirte fixes the shape arising out of this interactive wrestling by knotting the perl silk threaded through the endings of the layered bundle. The knots are strengthened by using coloured glue. To achieve even more stability she applies translucent ink protecting the colours against UV radiation [This I apply to the basic shapes before working with them]. This enhances the strength of the paper. One had better not jump into a swimming pool. Despite that it is really stable, or …? `Oh well´, she answers,`'even that will probably work. But I am not liable in this case.´
     Hirte's creative approach bases upon applying a constructive method, a formal idea primarily pointing to itself. Consequently her attitude to the phenomenon jewellery and its wearer is matter-of-factly, even pragmatic. Concerning jewellery, on the one hand, she appreciates the small dimensions allowing her to form the pendants in a single continuous process by hands. This allows the paper to respond immediately to the pressure of the fingers. That way she has the upper hand of – to be taken literally, too – everything during the working process. On the other hand the objects look different from each perspective, one cannot grasp them at a glance. The viewing experience depends on contingencies such as the the wearer's movement and the viewer's position. To enfold all its sculptural qualities the jewels need a background on which they are not fixed but are allowed to change incidentally their display side every now and then – the body of the wearer exactly suits these needs. `In my view the human body is the wall perfectly suited to present my objects.´, Lydia Hirte says, `Every person has got different proportions, even the way she dresses is different. This is the reason why the length of the necklaces can be varied. Of course the overall impression should be fine.´
     Since the start of her career Lydia Hirte has been using lines to reveal structures and, thus, to generate an artful, visually animating impression. In her work three-dimensionality did always arise from the plane. She already created brooches from folded German silver stripes at her diploma examination at the `Hochschule für Gestaltung´ (today, the School of Design of the Pforzheim University). In these brooches the stripes appear sometimes as lines, sometimes as plane. In one course of movement they suggest a three-dimensionality adding depth to the graphical appearance. The understatement and constructive composition of these works reveal relatedness to the jewellery of her teacher Jens-Rüdiger Lorenzen.
     Initially, Lydia Hirte used paper only to make models which she realized in metal. In doing so she discovered soon that paper and cardboard much more than other materials suit her desire for fast processability and diversity in terms of colour. She is impatient, emphasizes Lydia Hirte and, hence, paper is fine. Impatient? As to this jewellery artists seem to apply other standards than others. After all, the creation of a pendant on average requires one and a half week.
     Since their move to Dresden in 2004 Lydia Hirte has been creating those pendants essentially characterised by the tension between the rhythmic, overflowing dynamic of the lines and the closeness of the whole shape. Before that she took a career break lasting four years due to the adoption of two children.: `Originally, I had in mind to continue to work, however the children were in need of my concentration,´ she says. Ability and dedication to concentrate also characterise her works. It is really not easy to distract her from the subject once found. Over and over again she finds details when working which are worthwhile to be taken up and be developed further.
     In the course of working it needs only marginal changes in the movement of the fingers to vary over and over again the outcome of playing with the basic forms. Occasionally, six distinct pieces of jewellery emerge from a prototype of a bundle of paper stripes. To push her work Lydia Hirte often changes the length of the forms and the condition of the curvature. Recently she has not only been using one basic form for the bundles but has been using two distinct forms alternatively stacked on each other. This is the reason why overlapping planes emerge in the objects. Intensive, contrasting colours accentuate the spatial depth coming to the fore.
     Lydia Hirte prefers the texts on her jewellery to be written simple and direct. … But the reviewer does what he wants. He cites an essay written by Jacques Derrida. There he comments on the subjectile, an ancient word for the substrate of paintings which could be made of paper, too. This citation can also be applied to Lydia Hirte's way to cope with the essence of the material she uses.:
     `...the subjectile resists. It has to resist. It offers sometimes too much sometimes too little resistance. It has to resist to be eventually treated as itself but not as the medium bearing something else, the surface or the subordinate substrate of a representation. … It's lethargic body must not resist too much. If it does it has to be abused, violently attacked. One is getting violent against it. This neither/nor (neither subdued nor not subdued) of the subjectile constitutes the location of a double-blind: as such it can not be depicted...´ “