New work, new student

I have had a lovely couple of days teaching an introduction to art clay silver to an enthusiastic student.  Margaret has produced some beautiful work.  The top leaf shaped piece is her first and is oxidised.  For her second project she chose to make these beautiful earrings which she then enhanced using the keum boo technique of applying gold to the surface of the silver.  The third piece is based on the pendant by Alcina Nolley in the new Metalclay Artist Magazine.  My magazine had just arrived and we were flicking through it during our tea break and both loved the look of this project which is the perfect addition to the selection of ideas I have available to my new students, so thank you to Alcine and to Metalclay Artist Magazine.  I can see it will be a very useful tool on my workbench.

Crafts at the Castle

I have been down to Warwick this weekend for the annual 'Crafts at the Castle' craft fair. This year the stands were all inside the beautiful rooms of the castle, so it had a great atmosphere. Here is a photo of the Great Hall taken at a quiet moment.

My sister Ceri helped me, so we had a lovely weekend away together too.

The first photograph with the Christmas tree has my stand to the right hand side of the picture with Ceri sitting behind it. We were place in front of a very large and dramatic fire place which gave us a bit more space than behind some of the other stands.

The second photograph is the view from our stand with a fabulous array of armour and weapons displayed on the wall at the end of the room.

It was a very impressive venue. Some stands were in other rooms, one of which had amazing chandeliers.

We had a busy weekend with good sales and finished off with a quick visit and lunch at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on Monday on the way home.

Back to work in the studio today though.....

Memento for the plant collector's wife

I have at last got a photograph of this big necklace 'Memento for the Plant Collector's wife'. It is one of my pieces for my residency at Whitby museum and is inspired by the collections of herbaria. The herbaria are very beautiful and fragile collections of Victorian pressed plants and flowers. Earlier in the year I spent an afternoon with the Curator of this collection and she showed me a selection of the plants and allowed me to photograph them. I then converted some of the images into black and white and have used them to inspire various pieces of work since then. This is by far the largest.

To create this necklace I printed out a selection of the images in black and white; stuck the print outs onto sheet silver and sawed around them. I then constructed a chain to link them together. I then spent quite a bit of time polishing the whole thing but didn't like the very flat polished surface so went back over it to produce a scratched finish

Equipment

Today I have gone completely mad and ordered a new torch for glass bead making. I have emptied and cleaned the silver smithing hearth and extended it to make room for my new bead making place and am really looking forward to all the new equipment arriving. I did carry on and make a few more beads with my hothead torch though, mainly as I needed a few more to finish off a necklace.

Spring returns necklace

Here is the necklace which was part of the set of accessories submitted to the contest in Japan

showing the front and the reverse. This was inspired by a Japanese printed book in Whitby Museum and at the time I designed and made it I had a small Japanese cherry blossom in flower in my garden so was able to study the form of its flowers in detail. Around the front edge of the silver piece is a pattern of tiny blossoms while on the reverse is the leaf pattern I often use in my work.

The necklace also has a matching 'C' type clasp with the two patterns one on each surface.

The rings also have the same two surface patterns one on each side of the shank.

My good friend Joy Funnell also submitted work that was selected for this exhibition.

I will be keeping the box it was returned in, very beautifully labelled with Japanese characters. I am very honoured to have had my work included.

Exhibited in Japan

Today I received a small package of work returned from exhibition in Japan. The two pieces of jewellery were entered for the Silver Accessories Contest 2009 and although didn't win anything there were selected for exhibition and included in the exhibition catalogue. This was very exciting for me as this was the first time I have ever entered an international contest. Here are the rings shown together as a set then separately. As you can see when they are being worn the very narrow band of enamel is both hidden and protected in between the other two rings.

Autumn

I have spent quite a long time today sorting out glass beaded jewellery ready to send off for an exhibition. I have also been thinking about a new website, although difficult to decided whether to just stick with the very simple thing I have and keep on with the blog alongside it.

I have also been sorting out new images ready to have a batch of business cards and some postcards printed. Re-sizing the images for print always seems to take twice as long as I expect it to, so the day is nearly over and I have been sitting at the computer screen for too much of it.

I have put some of my new images in as a slide show called Autumn 2009 so that you can see what I have been up to.