It's the end of term now and the students are all on their way. I've finished off "A Forest" and have been tidying up the workshops.  On Monday, I went through to Edinburgh for an exceptionally rapid visit to see Sue Amendolara who is having a holiday here and which has resulted in me returning the visit to see her in Edinboro when I'm in Pennsylvania. All good!

I've been working on the box for "A…

Today was a bit of a surprise as I managed to finish "A Forest"! Yesterday, it seemed as if I still had loads of work to do to complete it, but it was finished by lunchtime, leaving me the pleasurable business of cleaning up my bench.

As you can see, it is on quite a large scale. It's large but not too heavy, though…

Since I last worked on "A Forest". The whirl of the degree shows has passed and I finally got back to the bench today. Before I put the degree shows completely behind me, anyone interested in seeing the work produced by my own students can look backwards through my Flickr photostream from here:

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Three degree shows in two days!

First up was the show at Glasgow School of Art, being held for the last time in the Newberry Tower building at GSA after 40 years of being the home of the department. Much as I really like the building, this show showed all-too-clearly why it was time to move: 19 people in one dark space. It didn't really work very well. Not to let that detract from the work. In a way, I am quite sad about the demise of this building as I really rather like it, but…

SO, my degree students have now all been graded and are awaiting their results after four non-stop days of marking, external exams and exam boards. Their degree show is tomorrow night and I am looking forward to that immensely. Unfortunately, it means that we've slightly neglected our other students and I forgot to mention that the HND, HNC and NQ students have been working hard to get their own entries ready for the prestigious Glasgow-wide competition run by the venerable…

The students on my new BA (Hons) Jewellery Design and Technology all set up their shows yesterday and it was being assessed today by the external examiner. This is the first year we've offered the BA programme and I was very nervous about it; it was also very, very tiring.

Overall, the show looks great. I'm very pleased with what the students have done, and I am absolutely delighted with the way that a couple of them have pleasantly surprised us with their work. Because the students…

There has been absolutely no update on my work on "A Forest" for the last two days as I've been locked away marking the work of our BA students. It is quite tiring and very intense, especially as this is the first year that I've taught on a degree-level course. I'm sure it gets easier... !

I'll be posting photographs of their show later in the week and if anyone is in Glasgow on Friday night, please come along from 7 - 9pm to North Glasgow College and have a look.

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Everything snapped back into focus today in the workshop when I actually completed a part of "A Forest". The chain is now completely constructed and only requires to be set, which I started doing before the sunny weather tempted me outside for a bike ride!

The cast elements of the chain put…

ACJ at Treasure

As part of the prestigious London Jewellery Week, the ACJ is proud to be represented at Treasure, part of the week which is dedicated to contemporary jewellery from all sorts of people.

You can visit the Treasure Website here, see who is exhibiting or have a look at the…

Since Thursday evening last week, it has been absolutely non-stop! I spent the weekend in Birmingham, the home of the jewellery industry in the UK and a city I love for its energy, friendliness and genuine multi-culturalism: ignore the naysayers who deride the place... It is WELL worth a visit.

The reason for visiting Birmingham this time was for a board meeting of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery, roughly the UK equivalent of SNAG, albeit on a slightly smaller…

Off to Birmingham this weekend to meet with fellow jewellers and Crafthaus members, Miriam Rowe and Yi Liu. I'm going down for a meeting of the board of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery and it's always good to make these things a bit social too.

Been doing a lot of work on "A Forest" too. I managed to complete the top of the main box structure:

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Well, I got loads done today despite having a strange 'flu-like thing which is making me cough a lot and sneeze loads - not good for soldering - without making me feel bad in any other way... 

Attached most of the top section of "A Forest": 

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Got quite a lot of work done on "A Forest" today:

This has easily been one of the most challenging silver-iron soldering exercises!

I wanted a large bullet cabochon for the bottom of the piece, to make into an "acorn" but my stone-dealer had nothing in stock and while I could have asked her to get one cut…

Because of time constraints, "A Forest" is having to be made to serve two purposes: 1) to enter for consideration in the show outlined in a previous post and; 2) to enter an informal "contest" between friends, colleagues and associates where we all tackle the same idea in our own way. The current challenge is to create a wearable perfume holder. I'm not quite sure at what point it occurred to me to combine the two projects, but they are now quite unified in my head!

I made…

Mondays are never a good day for me to make blog posts as I go straight from work to an evening meeting, from which I rarely get home before 22.30... however, this is a kind of monday-and-tuesday update on "A Forest". After Satuday's debacle of the sawblades, I managed to get started again on Monday morning with 1 dozen borrowed from one of my students - another of my students brought me half a gross in the afternoon (I have the best students!).

I managed to cast some of the…

A new maxim for metalsmiths, in the UK at least. I was hoping to finish the piercing on the box flat which will make up the main body of "A Forest" but broke my last 6/0 blade on the back panel:

As you can see, there are about half-a-dozen sections to go and the right-hand panel isn't even started. I can't use…

I started cutting the box for "A Forest" today: 

The trees were drawn in Inkscape from photographs of real trees (in Rye, East Sussex) and then transferred to Rhino to make the cutting plans;

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I've been planning my entry for BJ Johnson's call for pieces based on inspirations from the works of The Cure. Since I first read about this exhibition, I've been planning what to make and have ended up going with my initial feelings that I should work with the initial idea I had after reading the proposal: to make a piece around "A Forest", their 1980 single and a song which, for me, encapsulates their…

Anyone familiar with my recent work knows that I'm very keen on scrolls and banners! In Sheffield last month, I went to an exhibition of woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair (and others) dating from around 1512 and which were commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I as a means of commemorating himself after he died. It seems that Maximilian I was obsessed with his own death and immortality. One of the most amazing features of these prints - for me - was the scrolls and banners portrayed in…

When I was in my early 20s, I read compulsively Mervyn Peake's trilogy, "Titus Groan", "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone", a remarkable body of work which is, superficially, fantasy writing: Alas! it is too often dismissed as such. In fact, what Peake created was a fantastical portrait of a rigid, class-ridden society on the brink of collapse, a parable for Britain in the early-mid 20th Century.

As mentioned before, a gift of a polymer clay owl skull prompted me to create a…