I am thrilled to announce that I have been offered a stand at the upcoming contemporary silverware & jewellery selling fair, Goldsmiths North, to be held at the Cutlers Hall in Sheffield. This year's fair runs from Friday 8th to Sunday 10th July. The show holds extra excitement for me, because I will be returning to the city where I did my degree in metalwork and jewellery, as I graduated from Sheffield Hallam university back in 2005 and I am intrigued to see how the city has changed. It will also be a wonderful chance to catch up with fellow exhibitors, as I was a regular exhibitor at the London Goldsmiths Fair up until 2014, and many familiar faces are...
There have been some exciting changes here! In September, I moved into my brand new studio at Sharpe’s Pottery Museum in Swadlincote, South Derbyshire, just a few miles down the road from where I was before. My new studio was formerly a stairwell in the museum, which was converted over the summer. Once the conversion was complete, my brilliant friends, Alice (of Alice Draws the Line) and Jen gave me a hand with painting the studio - thank you ladies! I also had some carpentry done by local joiner Alan Gough, including putting up some much needed cupboards for storage. It was at times challenging, working out how I would fit it all in, but now it is all set...
For May, I was so delighted to select a little 0.03ct rose cut diamond, which I have been so looking forward to making a piece with. A rose cut is an unusual cut of stone, popular in Victorian times, and this particular diamond is a vintage one (I’m not sure how old) but it is rather wonderful to think it has already had a life in another piece of jewellery before. I decided to keep this one wonderfully simple, and created a 9ct yellow gold ring. This started as a square profile, but I altered it so the top has a subtle rounding, and then textured it with my treasured ball hammer I bought in South Korea on my university...
In April, from my envelopes, I chose a strand of beautiful snowflake obsidian gemstone beads to work with. I was so inspired by their form and snowflake pattern that I chose to design and create a necklace. Feeling ambitious after the necklace I created last month, I also decided to use a technique and tool I haven't used for a while: press forming. Snowflake obsidian is a black gemstone with a grey-white inclusions which appear rather like ice patterns. For my feature necklace, I wanted to create a pebble shaped centrepiece with the snowflake obsidian colours reversed, so the 'white' silver as the background with a textured pattern oxisided black. A vintage hammer with a rough file texture worked really well...
On 1st March for the envelope project, as we were still homeschooling, I asked my daughter Bryony to choose the envelope, and inside was a long leaf shaped black obsidian bead, which originally came from a strand of about twelve beads. I only have a very few of these left. I contemplated using a couple for some earrings, but when it came to it, a new pendant design was what felt right - and in a new twist, I made it so that bead in the centre of the pendant and can be rotated. It hangs from a continuous 'over the head' chain, with two hammered leaf outline details. It was great fun making this one, I like the tactile addition...
