Dressing Up

Another busy week with no chance to wind down from the post-conference activities. Not so much to report - finishing off a lot of work before the holidays:

Some for The Old Cinema in Chiswick, some for Cursley & Bond in Folkestone. I'm particularly pleased with the pieces for Folkestone, where they are part of the Triennial exhibition at C&B on the theme of "Double Edge". I'm making a pair of pendants from a pair of broken Victorian scissors:

Set with peridot, rhodolite garnet and a natural quartz "lens" which makes it into a kind of lorgnette magnifier.

There is an excellent exhibition on at the IKON gallery in Birmingham just now: work by Sheela Gowda made from old metal drums, flattened out, cut and some of them spun into bowls. Well worth a visit:

One of the courses at the School of Jewellery which is often overlooked a bit is the unusual Graduate Certificate course which is a short course designed to prepare non-jewellery graduates to enter the MA Jewellery course, run by Bridie Lander. Bridie is tasked with taking a cohort of students with BA qualifications in anything but jewellery, mostly from the Far East and South East Asia, and preparing them in 6 short months to be able to make jewellery. This sounds impossible, but...

Work by Xinrui Fu, exploring masks and Chinese theatre.

Work exploring "preciousness" by Qiao-Zhen Lin.

Work exploring "preciousness" by Qiao-Zhen Lin.

Angelia Chen's surrealist ear-cuff.

Friday night took me to Sleaford to the National Centre for Craft and Design (NCCD) where I have work in their newest show, "The World Is Your Dressing Up Box", covering all aspects of radical fashion, including jewellery. Once more, both Zoe Robertson and I are in the same show:

And I've just realised that this is the third consecutive show that I've been in at the NCCD! (Made in the Middle, ACJ 20:20 Visions and this one.)
The show is superb, great fun, thought-provoking and really well-curated, featuring a nice mix of big names, relatively mainstream makers (such as Irregular Choice) and some emerging voices.

There is a really pleasing mix of the thoughtful, the wearable and the outlandish too.

I was really pleased that my work opens the show with a little section of its own about men and jewellery...

And, of course, there is work for sale in the shop!

Holiday soon!

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Comment by The Justified Sinner on July 25, 2017 at 7:57am: It is exactly that! Brass and resin. The bangle is slightly smaller than standard size, around 75mm diameter.

Do you know Bridie? It might be worth emailing her to see if she can send you more information. I am really impressed with what these students have come up with in such a short time.

Comment by Brigitte Martin on July 25, 2017 at 7:02am: Could you tell me more about the materials and measurements in this piece? I assume it's a bangle made from brass and resin?

Comment by Brigitte Martin on July 25, 2017 at 7:00am: I am absolutely intrigued by this course your school offers:

...the unusual Graduate Certificate course which is a short course designed to prepare non-jewellery graduates to enter the MA Jewellery course, run by Bridie Lander. Bridie is tasked with taking a cohort of students with BA qualifications in anything but jewellery, mostly from the Far East and South East Asia, and preparing them in 6 short months to be able to make jewellery....

I would love to see this development live and in action. There is so much to learn from this crash-course-type approach that is applicable to pretty much every aspect of one's life. This is fascinating!