Jewellery exhibition makes the local press

I have just been away at the Guild of Enamellers (more on this later).  While away got messages from friends saying that the jewellery exhibition at Whitby Museum had a feature in the local press.  I had no idea they meant a full page and what a nice article - thank you Whitby Gazette!

More of the Jewellery Exhibition

Whitby Museum is such an amazing place.  This carved and painted bird is from New Ireland in the Pacific.  He was given to the museum in 1928 by Captain Readman and has been one of my favourite objects since I began my residency at the beginning of 2009.  He usually resides in the Cook wing of the museum but a few days ago I had to take him out to photograph him for another project I am just starting work on.  The door of the cabinet was a bit difficult to open and that gave me the perfect excuse to move him to a temporary home in the jewellery exhibition (I know he's not really jewellery!).

Here he is though with my visitors book and a few badges and other fun things made during my year.  The hands related both to making and to the 'Hand of Glory' (more gory than glory as Peter on the main desk often tells visitors).  On days when I have been sketching in the museum I often left my sign out along with paper, pencils and pens and asked visitors to draw around their own hand and say what there favourite thing about the museum was.  I never asked anyone to decorate their drawing, it was just something that happened naturally but I have a lovely collection of these paper hands, many of which have been stuck into the album but some are temporarily displayed here on the back of the display case - I am still collecting them.

This bracelet has been made from small items found in the museum during the year, a couple of them I embedded in resin and made silver settings for, others I simply attached.  I think the bit of stone was a fragment of amethyst and the glass bear I made a silver wire collar for.  It has become a bracelet of things once lost, now found.  

My badge project has developed a new life, at different times last summer I made badges for visitors.  Now as part of the jewellery exhibition I have created a piece of work called 'Equivalent' which has a small explanation panel and a lot of transparent plastic pockets with badges in.  It asks visitors to take a badge and leave me something in exchange.  I have left circles for drawings and these are the first six drawings left by visitors.  I was also left an interesting chunk of hard green stone with a groove in it and an old sixpenny piece - so they are now on my workbench waiting to become part of something new.  I was really excited to find that visitors understood my ideas and am enjoying their responses.

The exhibition opens

I realised as I uploaded this image that I took it before I had quite finished.  The panel you can see on the right hand side how has a selection of badges in the transparent pockets.  It has been a huge amount of work selecting the objects for this exhibition but I am quite pleased with the result.  It is the first time I have been involved in anything on this scale.  It has historic jewellery selected from many different areas in Whitby Museum's collections and from a wide range of places across the world.  It has jewellery made of a wide variety of different materials, including of course many very fine examples of Whitby Jet.  I hope a few of you will make the journey up to Whitby and have a look.  If you do, please let me know what you think.