Cultus Artem brings sculptural 18-karat gold jewelry to Bridgehampton

Cultus Artem brought a rarer kind of luxury to Bridgehampton: 18-karat gold that moved, opened and revealed something more intimate than a logo. At Stella Flame Gallery, Holly Tupper showed sculptural pieces with textured gemstones, kinetic construction and porcelain inserts meant to hold fragrance, a tactile approach that made the jewelry feel less like display and more like an object of use.

The centerpiece was the Memento Amore Locket Pendant, an 18-karat gold design from Cultus Artem’s Flats collection. The locket pairs polished metal with a porcelain disc or insert for one of the brand’s fragrances, a detail that gives the piece its strongest argument: it is not merely worn, it is activated. Nearby, a gold necklace accented with tourmaline and pearls underscored the same instinct for contrast, balancing the warmth of gold against stones that bring color, irregularity and movement.

Stella Flame Gallery staged the exhibition from July 3 to July 5, 2026, with an opening party on July 3 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 2385 Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton, New York. The setting was well chosen. Stella Flame Gallery is entering its third year in Bridgehampton, and the room was calibrated for pieces that depend on proximity, not distance. The event also celebrated painter Emanuel de Sousa, who was presenting new works on canvas, adding another layer of surface and texture to a presentation already built around touch.

Cultus Artem says the brand was established in 2015 by Holly Tupper and is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. Its jewelry pages frame the line as limited-edition and one-of-a-kind 18k gold work formed through paradox, using materials collected over three decades. That long accumulation matters here. The brand’s best pieces do not read as conventional high jewelry statements with a single stone or an obvious center. They are built from accumulation, from rough meeting refined, from the idea that a jewel can carry memory, scent and movement at once.

That sensibility was especially clear in the modular earrings on Cultus Artem’s product pages, where removable black tourmaline elements hang with peacock pearls. It is the sort of detail that changes how gold behaves on the body: less fixed, more responsive. In a season still crowded with oversized silhouettes, Cultus Artem’s Bridgehampton showing argued for something more compelling, a luxury built on texture, mechanism and the small surprise of a piece that changes as you wear it.