Kicked off the week of 16th January with an exhibition of work by one of my colleagues, Toni Mayner, who brings her…

I should have posted this ages ago but somehow, despite the constant reminders, I forgot!

My work has made the cover of a major new book on "Narrative Jewellery":

"Blood Will Have Blood: A Macbeth…

This week kicked off with "…

In a week dominated by Trump and other fascist excesses, this terrible marketing puff for - believe it or not - flats in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham struck me as desperately appropriate. On another week, I might have mused on…

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…

Yes, indeed. It may only be early September but I've been clearing the falling leaves from the garden, planting out my winter leeks and sowing land cress, radicchio and lettuce for winter salads, as well as poring over the seed catalogues which dropped through the door over the last week. (I'm not really sure why I get printed catalogues by post as I order my seeds and plants from the same companies online!)



This week I've been mostly working on the pieces for "Made in the Middle"…

This last week has been taken up by exploring a fairly new material with the pleasingly forthright Ronda Coryell, a delightful Amercian woman who is an expert in the use…

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…

No blog post last weekend as I didn't get home from being in the Netherlands until late on Sunday night.

The…

Almost.



A short post as I'm on holiday now in Brighton.

Last week was fairly quiet, finishing with a student lunch on Friday before we split up for the winter break. I did get a chance to finish the last commission for Christmas,…

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…

AND back at the bench! Hooray!

I've begun to catch up with commissions and making stock work. Immediately, I'm working on a piece incorporating a small 9ct Edwardian brooch and some of the metal found on Dungeness…

Such a lot going on and I've not posted again for two weeks. SO, since my last post, summer has been an intermittent affair of hot sun and cold rain and the last week or so, the weather has turned decidedly cool. On one of those cool…

So, as per my summer norms, I am in Brighton again for the summer season, reminding me of the quote from "Prick Up Your Ears", 'When you say he's on the Coast, dear, do you mean he's in…

As the end-of-term approaches and it becomes time to pack up the workshops for the summer break, I've been making up the stock to keep things going over the summer, which this time has involved using up odds and ends from other projects. A while…

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…