|
I am a jewellery designer/maker working with Silver, Gold, Enamel, Bio resin, Semi precious stones, Jesmonite, Collage and other materials to create layered, one of a kind, original pieces from my studio in Hayle, Cornwall.
All of the jewellery is designed and made by hand in my studio. My real passion is the making, designing and playing with new ideas and materials. It keeps me involved and keeps my work fresh but it does mean I produce fewer pieces than I otherwise could. I love my work and have run my business sucessfully for 18 years selling and exhibiting nationally and internationally and working on some great projects. I have chosen in recent years to go back to working on a smaller scale, keeping things uncomplicated and low key whilst my children are young. I am committed to keeping my work as low impact as possible environmentally and I reuse a great many materials. Many of my pieces involve melted and reworked silver and gold and my resin is a bio resin produced from reused materials. All of my cleaning agents and pickles are non toxic and my packaging- Boxes, ribbon, tissue paper and mailing envelopes- is made from100% recycled materials. |
|
|
|
My work is constantly changing and a lot of my current pieces are very beach and sea influenced. I live and work about a 10 minute walk from huge, windswept sand beaches that are typical of the North coast here. I've spent a vast amount of time on their vast spaces since having my children as they are our absolute go to, winter and summer. Ive had long periods of fewer work hours where I've supplemented my missing studio time and inate inclination to be making jewellery with lots of fidgeting around with seaweed and other naturally sandblasted beach things while Ive been out and the jewellery Im currently working on is a result of all the percolated fidgeting. The space, the huge skies and horizon lines of the beaches have also influenced a lot of the look and feel of the new pieces. The beaches are bordered by the Towans, miles of dunes filled with shells, bones, worn wood and other blasted and washed up things. If you are interested in why this all means jewellery to me, I sometimes write about it here
|
|
|
I love (and am very curious about) combining mterials. I am currently working with a different bio resin that allows me to embed again and have been making pieces that are to do with the spaciousness and bleached out colour of the long stretch of dunes here. Im also enjoying the colour that enamel brings to metals and the silver casting process generally. Im exploring rings at the moment that can combine the enamelling with either set stones or resin. I also love mixing metals and I make a lot of pieces that combine silver and gold or different golds or gold and enamel and so on...
|
A bit more about the work.......
I began casting plastics whilst living in New York and, finding that resin casting was not something that was specifically taught, took numerous short courses and practiced my design and technique daily. In addition to extensive research I spent 2 years with Cartier International in Miami. On returning to Cornwall ( where I had grown up and vowed never to return to), and with the help of an entrepreneurial award, I set up my existing business in 2003. My work has flourished and been sold through Exhibitions, Galleries, Museums, collectives and commissions for the subsequent 18 years. Ive always enjoyed experimenting with my own mouldmaking having initially taken a course in this at the Educational Alliance in New York, and my jewellery has often been characterised by complex, cast, light holding shapes. I love the freedom of creating my own shapes...some work, some don't...but their 3 dimensionality is central to so many of the pieces. I focused on casting plastics for years and have more recently applied the same skills to metals. Below are pictures of some of my mouldmaking processes which are still central to my work.
|
|
These pieces to the left were made with polyester resin in hadmade moulds with layer upon layer of embedded content. The cast pieces were then combined with pearls, precious metals and semi preious stones.
During this period I took part in a great many exhibitions and curated events, including a commission by the Royal Academy of Art to produce a range of jewellery for the summer show and a comprehensive project with the Leach Pottery, St Ives. I also worked with Falmouth University on a digital project as well as many different organisations in the capacity of a keynote speaker |
|
In 2011 I began working with a plant based casting resin that had none of the more problematic chemicals.
The work shifted as greater significance was placed on complex mould making that allowed for detailed, figurative castings which were less content laden, but able to hold the shape and the light. The BioResin was on many levels a product still in development and its casting properties changed batch to batch making it tempremental to work with. By 2016 it was becoming problematic to get hold of in the UK and I switched to a US bioresin with very different casting properties. A change in materials always informs a change in whats made. Pictured are also some brooches using jesmonite, a material I also love |
|
|
|
In 2013 I began to carry these figurative themes across into the work with metals that was beginning to evolve alongside the resin casting. The same mouldmaking processes translated beautifully into these new collections of work
|
|
|
It wasnt so long before enamels and gold were added into the mix to bring colour and textural variation. With the Polyesther resin and Bioresin I had always worked in layers and even though the results were different the approach to 'building' pieces had remained more or less the same. I've become fascinated by the translucent layers that enamel can bring and the the soft warmth of gold both providing depth in a piece.
|
|
As well as the layering another theme that unifies my work in its many incarnations is the incorporation of words, mostly fragments of lines of poetry. I've never formally trained as jeweller but I do hold a degree in literature and this has always been a counterpoint to my making and a side of myself that predates the jewellery
|
|
|
Pieces of text have been floated in the resin, cut into the layered plexiglas pieces, stamped on silver bands and also used as the entire content of a piece with my plain silver band bracelets that contain several stanzas in obsessively small lettering. I'm still more comfortable with words than I am with anything tangible and I still see words as more beautiful and evocative than any shape or colour.
|
|
