Waa!

My wonderful, indispensible, reliable, cheerful, friendly, unflappable workshop technician, Fiona, is leaving on Thursday. She's found a better-paid job with more promotional prospects and she'll be superb. The students will all miss her and they arranged a lunch for her today, which was great fun.…

The crazy Easter Holiday is over, back from Istanbul, Brighton and the Bowie exhibition at the V&A - quite wonderful, well worth seeing if you are a Bowie fan, probably best avoided if you are not - and back into the workshop. I've been there for a week now, but it has been so hectic that it feels like I've never been away.



My first morning back, I had agreed to help the Physical Education department to train their new personal trainers, so I was sweating buckets on a…

Friday morning, I set off early to cross the Bosphorous and set foot in the Asian continent, the "Asian side" of Istanbul. The weather was clear and warm, by far the nicest of the week, and I boarded the ferry to…

Thursday and the second day I had to be a tourist in the city, I headed off to Topkapi Palace, a place which has held much fascination for me since Dingo introduced me to the 1960s caper movie, "Topkapi", a favourite fun film for both of us. Naturally, as a jeweller, I wanted to see the famous treasury and, as a metalsmith, the armoury.

I can't say that I was disappointed in the objects on display, but I can say that it was one…

Wednesday, I had the chance to relax a bit and be a tourist in the city, heading off first thing to see the amazing Hagia Sophia, the wonderful Orthodox church, turned mosque, turned museum.…

Time for my teaching session, held in Hraç Arslanyan's "Mahrec Art House" workshops.

Hraç Arslanyan is an amazing jeweller, working with…

Just returned from my five days in Istanbul where my first solo show was held in the Ayse Taki Galerisi as a result of the kindness and generosity of both the gallery owner, Ayse, and my friend and colleague Umut Demirguc Thurman who worked incredibly hard to make the show a phenomenal…

People familiar with my work may be surprised to learn that I use CAD (Rhino, primarily) as a design tool and that quite often, elements of my work are made using CAM processes, such as 3D milling of wax which is then cast in precious metals. My own approach to these technologies is not unique and while I don’t use them as a primary method of production, there are many makers who do – Janet Huddie,…

Well, not quite, but I did have to travel on a bus - which is nearly a handcart - the trains being cancelled due to a landslip.

Hull is an odd place. For the place in the UK with the highest rates of unemployment and some of the lowest property prices, it feels like a prosperous city. It is clean, it is busy, there are plenty of galleries and cafés. Adding to the oddness is the fact that it is in Yorkshire but while the buildings are completely as you would expect in that great county…

Catching up!

Monday brought me to visit the lovely Oakland campus of the California College of the Arts with Curtis, where I met the legendary - but modest and charming - Marilyn da Silva and spoke to their excellent students.

This was the first time I had been asked to give a talk about my work and background, rather than talking about technical practice and I found it quite nerve-wracking. Unusually, I was exceptionally nervous, fumbling about and fluffing lines until I…

I had originally nothing planned for the Sunday of my visit. I had been hoping that Victoria would be able to get down from Seattle to meet me, but that didn't happen. Mike - from Velvet da Vinci - and his partner, Tom, took me out for breakfast at "Brenda's", the most happening place in San Francisco for breakfast, it seems (we had to wait about 40 minutes for a…

Apologies for the hiatus in blogging my visit to San Francisco; I had to spend some time in Yorkshire discussing a project which I hope to present here in the very near future.

My second day in San Francisco was spent at the American Craft Council/California College of the Arts symposium called "Craft Forward-ing", an event aimed at students and new graduates with a view to giving them an introduction to the world of business and suggesting ways of actually making money out of…

Just back to a cloudy, damp, icy cold day in Glasgow, having boarded the plane from San Francisco at 18 degrees C and brilliant sun. The air there was clear, here it is fugged with tobacco smoke. Everyone looks miserable. I look miserable. I have to get to work before 4pm for a meeting with the college Prinicpal at which he told us about financial cuts to the education sector. Not a great return from what was an amazing four days on the East Coast of the USA...

I am not really sure…

I've never channel-set round stones until today...

I'm genuinely surprised that it is easier than channel setting square stones, which I have done before on many occasions. I had always imagined that the round stones - not fitting so squarely into the channel - would rock about, but they don't. The problem…

One of the publicity images for Ferrous, the joint Crafthaus/VdV show at Velvet da Vinci, San Francisco...…

One of my students, Inness Thomson, though only part of the way through his course, has just opened his first small show at Scotland Art.Com, a gallery in the centre of glasgow. As you can understand, he is justifiably proud:

I especially like his silver and…

Edinburgh over the weekend and what an exhausting marathon it proved to be, jumping from gallery to gallery before collecting my new kilt (no photographs as yet!). 

I started off at the Vikings! exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland, a phenomenal tour-de-force of utterly gasp-inducing metalwork with some glass, wood and textiles on the side. A joint exhibition between NMS and…

I quite often find myself a bit "drained" when I've finally finished a piece of work and, having finished the codpiece, I could relax a bit and make some less challenging work, such as some earring trios to offer to the "Earrings Galore" show at Heidi Lowe Gallery, the call for which is here. I had the annoying problem of a flask of castings of settings for one set failing twice, but have…

Further to yesterday's post, I now have the professional photographs of the codpiece, taken by Simon Murphy: 

 …

First of all, a belated "happy new year" to my colleagues and friends on Crafthaus. I returned from my festive break to a 'flu which completely knocked me for six, to the point that I was in bed and unable to move... feverish, coughing, weak and aching. Horrible, in short. 

2013 has already started off to be busy. First of all I had a quick-fire commission to make a ring "with fish that have a bit of life about them, something in blues and greens" but which had to be…