Last week kicked off to a glorious start with the Goldsmiths' Company Craft and Design Awards, held in the opulent surroundings of Goldsmiths' Hall in…

Hayley Jones

A bumper two-week post…

Not having posted for four weeks, you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd dropped off the face of the earth, but I was just having an extended Christmas holiday and settling back into work again. I didn't feel inclined to do a retrospective of the year gone by and I've a horrible feeling that next Christmas I may not feel like doing a retrospective then. In short, I'm somewhat lacking in global optimism just now.



That as may be, things here are going along as normal.



Back to…

Not much to report this week, except that I've been to a couple of excellent concerts. The first up was "Trajet" at St. Phillip's Cathedral in the city centre, a piece for solo 'cello which was written from seismic recordings taken of filled-in…

What a week!

Quite apart from the preparations for the new students starting next week (and the previous ones returning, of course), I've spent a lot of time in the workshops - on Tuesday evening as much to avoid violent thunderstorms as anything else - making up work for the Made In The Middle show, work which shows a completely new way of working for me, eschewing applied - illustrative - narrative for a more 'improvised' narrative of material, being braver about allowing the…

A shortish post, despite a busy week with the (almost) full compliment of staff back at the School of Jewellery and preparing for the new intake of students. I can't quite believe that it is a whole year since I started there. What a whirlwind!

I have written before of my friend, Carrie Fertig (…

Today I made a visit to deepest Wales on a spur-of-the-moment response to a Tweet by one of my favourite artists, Brian Eno.…

This week has been taken up with the tough paperwork exercises of re-writing the whole curriculum at the School of Jewellery to make it more dynamic and flexible. We've taken the opportunity to make the whole thing more craft-based, which is…

This week kicked off with a visit to the Birmingham Rep theatre to hear the Music Theatre Wales production of a new opera by Scottish composer, Stuart MacRae, with a libretto by popular crime-writer, Louise Welsh,…

Not much to report this week. I think that everything seems to quieten down for this dark period between new year and spring. I've mostly been working on the house and getting the students through their first…

So we kick off this week with an correction and an apology. In my last blog, I credited the elegant champagne-flute holders which were used at the Fei Liu reception as having been "designed and made" by Paul…

The new intake of students were in this week: gemmologists, horologists, jewellers, silversmiths, CAD designers; the new HND, BA, MA starts. It was brilliant to be in the school when it is buzzing and we spent Monday avoiding…

The main event this week has been completing my watch and chain for the ACJ exhibition "Sleight of Hand". The last element to be completed was the fitting of a glass to the 1838 silver watch-case which was…

I've just got back from almost a week in the Lone Star State which I was visiting on the invitation of my friends and colleagues, James Thurman and Umut Demirguc Thurman. What a trip!



Based in Denton, Dallas, the main…

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…

The way my schedule has worked out this year, I've managed to miss most of the Edinburgh Festival and so when I went through this weekend, there was a certain lack of energy about the place, shows closing, posters coming down, people leaving. The atmosphere wasn't wholly helped by the dreich weather but I still had an excellent weekend, as I always seem to do when I visit the Scottish capital.…

Well, having cleared the workshops, catalogued my stones and re-organised the casting room, I found in my inbox a reminder for "Suspended in Green", the final show in the highly successful…