What a week!



Kicking it all off was the annual Goldsmiths' Craft and Design Awards in the gilded splendour of…

This was the week that the School of Jewellery hosted the recycling-performance work, "JUNK: Rubbish To Gold" with teams of the most experimental and interesting jewellers coming in - from as far afield as Ohio and Germany - to…

SO, it is 2015 and I've not made a post for almost a month, which is most remiss. First of all, I wish everyone a happy and successful 2015 and hope that we can overcome what has not, generally, been a particularly…

A busy week in the run up to the festive season.



Kicked off with the pleasing completion of a watch-chain for my friend and colleague,…

An eventful week which included my 50th birthday!



I've been in Edinburgh again for a couple of events, taking in the current show of work by the Northern Irish family of Silversmiths "The McCrory Family" as well as…

Today I headed off to Edinburgh with one aim: to see the show of work by the wonderful Judy Clark and her twin sister, Christine. I've written of Judy before - commissioning a…

Having written over the weekend that I would post pictures of work by Lynn Cochrane, fashion graduate from Glasgow Kelvin College at her degree show last week, I completely forgot and so am…

As many readers know (if you can call my small but dedicated readers "many"!) we've been running a degree programme within Glasgow Kelvin College - née: North Glasgow College - for some four…

At last the terrible weather and 'flu have abated and we've had a few decent days which, along with light for my bike ride to and from work, always raises my spirits!



I've finally completed the Verdura-inspired cuffs…

Last night was the event of the "Scottish Style Awards" for which I had been nominated as Scotland's "Most Stylish Male". I am really glad to be able to…

This last week has been a whirlwind of activity and has left me feeling drained but exhilirated. I may as well not beat about the bush and say that I have been nominated as "Scotland's Most Stylish Male" at the bi-annual Scottish Style Awards. This came as a genuine bolt-from-the-blue shock and intially, I thought that one of the students was having a joke with me about my generally dishevelled workshop appearance but it turned…

Many years ago, I realised that Alexander McQueen was not a couturier in the usual sense of the word. It was his commission of the collar from Shaun Leanne for his 2001 catwalk show which drew my attention to his work - the collar is a stunning assembly of lethal silver spikes and grey pearls, seen at 7:40 in the video below - and the show just blew me away. From that moment on, I never thought of McQueen as a clothing designer but as a sculptor, a critic, an historian, someone with a…

So, after all the blogging of the degree shows and other peoples' students' work, it is now the time of my own non-degree students to shine. Every year, the august body, The Trades Hall of Glasgow, a marvellous philanthropic association of people who strive to preserve the craft skills in society, organise a competition between the colleges of Further Education in which the students compete to win substantial cash prizes,…