Dutch jewellery and product designer Gijs Bakker (b. 1942) has been a prominent figure in international jewellery for over forty years. He has been setting trends in both form and design since the 1960s. Bakker and his wife Emmy van Leersum are credited with the supreme achievement of having elevated jewellery to a cutting-edge art form in its own right, and sparking off the development of avant-garde art jewellery in Europe and the U.S.