Jan Donaldson

At last I can reveal the "secret project" I have been working on for the last month for "The Contemporary Jewellery Exchange 2015" in which various contemporary jewellers around the world create pieces which they send to each other. I didn't want to…

I've been on holiday! Last thing on my bench were the silver "rabbit in a hat" charms, one of which I managed to set and polish:

This one has 24 x 1.8mm garnets round it and I'm making others with…

This last couple of months has been absolutely unbearable for someone who enjoys sharing the progress of works online. First came the Caledonian Sleeper cufflink commission, then came my work with "The…

Gets longer and longer.



I need to get into the habit of posting more frequently.



The last couple of weeks have been very busy, mainly working on the cufflinks for the Caledonian Sleeper which I am not allowed to show you until after the press-launch on 23rd March. It is a real production job and not the sort of thing I really enjoy, even though I am going to be so incredibly proud to know that my work is part of something so big and impressive.

I remember hearing an article on Radio 4's "All in the Mind" programme about how the definitions of mental illness were changing due to the re-writing of a single book which is generally used to define all mental illnesses. A psychiatrist who disagreed with the new definitions pointed out,



"most people in the west do not consider themselves to be fundamentally happy... because the majority of the population do not consider themselves to be happy, we could say that anyone…

... I find February to be by far the cruellest month and the raw, icy blasts this year have not done anything to make me change my mind.

Lots of odd things to report on since my last post, including a box of "gingerbread gimps"…

Somehow it is approaching the end of January and looking at my last blog post, Christmas and New Year seem so far away. I've been incredibly busy working on lots of small projects - largely re-stocking after pre-Christmas sales both…

The last few weeks have been busy but ultimately I've not really achieved very much. The photograph above just about sums up my current attitude to Christmas and the plasti-tat landfill festival it has come to represent, not much…

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…

Last day of October and spooky hallowe'en is here again. I've never much bothered with the festival as I'm not much of a horror fan but this year I've been paying a bit more attention and have been finding it quite funny, especially…

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…

Gordon Millar, organiser of the "Scot Street Style" events.



What a whirlwind of a week!

It all kicked off on Saturday night with a visit to…

Since my last post, I've been on the south coast of England, variously in London, Folkestone and Brighton. What should have been a very relaxing weekend proved to be anything but, albeit in a good way. Very…

This is a long, somewhat involved and ultimately negative blog-post but I think it contains information of interest to many makers who use the PayPal payments service.



Some of you who follow my blog or who…

I think the whole arts world knew about the fire in the Glasgow School of Art, the functional art-school building by Charles Rennie Mackintosh which was SO fit for purpose in the early 1900s that it is…

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…

Further to my last post, I now present some work by Stephanie Mearns, visible on the left of this shot of Andrew and Anita Neilson:

Her work uses biological…

It is getting on for the season of Degree Shows in Scotland again and it was with some interest that I went along to the exhibtion at "The Lighthouse" in…

Lots going on in the workshop in the last few weeks but I'll start off with the completed pictures of Fashion:Vitcim by the incredible Andrew Neilson at…

Since my last post, spring can definitely be said to have arrived and the Easter break saw sunshine all day and every day except the last. It is great to be seeing the sky still slightly light at 9pm and to feel the warmth in the…