Thoughts on finding a 'maker's voice'

When you make jewellery, in my case usually inspired by the natural forms and textures I find in my garden or the nature reserve on my doorstep, you find yourself in the often uncomfortable position of reworking shapes and objects like leaves and pebbles that thousands of other jewellers are also exploring in their own way. Hopefully as one's skills and vision grow, one begins to find a sort of 'maker's voice', a recognisable style and direction of one's own which slowly becomes signature. Over the Christmas break, I will continue to look through my collections and keep distilling them down to the key pieces which seem to best voice my personal view and love of botanical forms, those which have resulted from the most direct interactions and explorations of my local landscape, from my own sketches, photographs, flower pressing and so on.

Even with my more generic pieces like my stacking rings or dish set rings, there are many design choices I have made in order to keep my pieces inherently different and my own. For example, every dish set ring I make, whilst being a very common mount shape, is made using entirely unique- to-me ring shanks. For years, instead of using regular wire to make these rings, I use bands I originally carved out of wax - a skinny one, a bark textured one and a wide one, all with flat profiles to make stacking easier.

Every single dish set or stacking ring (apart from really big ones which very occasionally need to be made with wire formed to match) is made using one of these three unique bands. Each one has little irregularities of shape and texture that make them different and entirely 'Wild Acre'. I have always polished my pieces myself, with shiny or brushed finishes or some more rustic finishes using my own customised tools.

Tomorrow, I am pootling off to my local art suppliers and getting myself a new and lovely big sketchbook for 2016 - not just for drawing in, but as in my sketchbooks of previous years, for sticking in gorgeous meadowgrasses, hedgerow flowers and scraps of lichen and other lovely finds to inspire my work. This is where my focus is going to be this coming year, on the meadowy, watery landscape I am so lucky to live in and the small botanical wonders I find there. Seed heads, acorns, summer grasses - these sort of things may not be the most original of inspirations but they are the things I love, that I am surrounded by and which seem to call my name, so I am giving my creative energy to voicing with confidence the beauty I find here. Less worry about what others think, more focus on practising my drawing, photo taking and silversmith skills, more experimentation and play, so that voice can sing a bit more freely and less fearfully.

The year is drawing to a close after a fantastic few weeks of fairs and events and am so grateful for every customer, new and old, for every conversation about what I am trying to do, and for the lovely enthusiasm and support I have found - thank you so much to everyone who has supported my small business this year, I am so thankful. My webshop is shutting for a couple of weeks from this friday 18th December, but I look forward to re-opening in January, hopefully rested and rejuvenated and ready for the new year with new ideas and dreams beginning to bubble away! Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas. xxx

wabi sabi, seeds and gold

All summer long, I am transfixed by the beautiful flowers and grasses in the water meadows behind my house, but as autumn rolls by, it is the beautiful patches of woodland and, especially, the increasingly skeletal seedheads along the hedgerows and in the local meadows that catch my eye.

A few years ago,  I chose a photo of a seedhead of giant cowparsley as the logo for my business because I love the delicate umbel shape, the pretty, papery seeds ready to catch a breeze, the fact that the beauty is unrepentently caught up in its impermanence, fragility, simplicity.

This also seems to capture notions of wabi sabi - the Japanese idea that there is value and beauty in the natural, simple, impermanant. This philosophy is becoming more and more central to my life and my work - noticing the exquisite in the ordinary and simple, and embracing natural, organic conduits of inspiration and comfort is very instinctive to me but is also beginning to form an outlook and appreciation for life that feels very truthful and much more 'me' than more current Western pre-occupations with glamour, success, status and competitive perfectionism. In my making, this actually requires real focus and precision because if you are going to make something that celebrates natural textures and organic forms, with all their inherent little imperfections and simplicity, then they need to be very carefully considered to remain visually pleasing and intriguing. This is why design and making will always be a learning process, a honing and gathering together of skills, ideas and vision.

Crucially, there is a stillness at the heart of my understanding of wabi sabi's connection to creativity - and I definitely need this stillness in wild places to take time to really notice the beauty surrounding me, stillness in considering designs, stillness in the quiet, hopefully lovely pieces of jewellery that result. I don't want to make jewellery that shouts, competes, draws attention across a room, I want to create small, nature inspired pieces that speak of stillness, simplicity, beauty. It feels good to write it down, these thoughts have been swirling around my mind for months!

In the last fewe weeks, the small, oval seeds on the giant cowparsley have struck me as really lovely shapes to use in a new collection - so emphemeral and simple, yet because within them they hold the potential to create plants over seven foot high they are also symbolic of regeneration and hope. This aspect of seeds really appeals to me - their small ordinariness combined with their incredible potential and energy. I think seeds, seedheads and husks will be a rich seam of inspiration.

I am making some cowparsley seeds in silver and gold, and we will see how it goes! Autumn, seedheads, wabi sabi and gold - all swimming around in my mind and imagination, it makes sense to me, I hope it makes some sense to you?!

Being Creative

Julia Crossland's fantastic project, Being Creative, has inspired me to hunt out my paintbrushes, (after they have collected dust for a mere 11 years languishing untouched in the kids' art cupboard!).

The results are embarrassingly ham-fisted, or shall we be very kind and say, 'niave'!

The theme for March is 'garden', which I used as an excuse to push the macro setting on my camera to its limits and get a few final pics of the hellebores before they start to look less than their best. These were the results, not as good as they would be with a DSLR, but fun to do. (If anyone can give me any advice on a decent beginner's DSLR, but with a great macro lens, I would be so grateful.)

And here are the daubs I attempted. Sheesh, the blushes.

What it made me remember is that it is very difficult to be good at something which you don't work at regularly and energetically, I painted so much better than this when I was a teenager and painting often. I hope next month, I can make some jewellery to fit the theme!

48 hours in Paris

At the end of last week I sneaked a cheeky 48 hours in Paris. Richard was going over to speak at a conference, and suddenly realised he had a free double room in Montparnasse for two nights... well it was only polite to agree to be his roomie, right??

So, off we went to St Pancras, (which was looking refurbished and rather resplendent),

just a little skippy and excited with the trolly suitcase in one hand and a stack of Paris guides in another (well I was skippy, Richard was calm as always!). And,  just like that we were on Eurostar and off to Paris. So easy and comfortable, and as quick as a trip to Glasgow!

We had two days to explore and enjoy, and while Richard was working,  I had the lovely company of wife of a colleague of his, already a friend, to wander the city with, and we saw so much. I know Paris a little and went back to a few favourite places and found lots of new wonders.

First up,  Notre Dame. It is breathtaking on the outside, the statuary carved in the 1200s and still in amazing condition. Pope Alexander laid the first stone in 1163 and it stands on the site of an ancient Roman temple.

The interior is incredible. When we visited a service was taking place, and the cathedral was filled with beautiful sound of chanted psalms and the soaring arches and awe-inspiring stained glass together created a very moving experience. This South Rose Window contains some of its original 13th century glass and is 13 metres high.

This is the North Rose Window, enough, had I been alone in the place, to bring me to my knees.

The good thing about visiting Paris in November is that the crowds are really not too bad, there was space and time to take all this in and savour the atmosphere and peace.

From Notre Dame, we moved onto to the nearby Concierge - the ancient Capetian royal palace which became the seat of royal administration and law in the 15th century, and then during the Revolution it became a huge prison holding over 4000 prisoners, many awaiting the guillotine. Some original cells remain, including that of Marie-Antoinette. The small women's courtyard, where female prisoners were allowed to walk and wash their clothes was particularly poignant,

It is pristine now, but the filth and terror must have been appalling, and one can only imagine the horrors of this pen, where condemned women were held just prior to execution,

After all this beauty and tragedy, we needed some fun, so it was off to the shops and cafes for some serious mooching and window shopping. We found the most fabulous homeware shop, stuffed to the gunnels with the most gorgeous lighting, clocks, linens, furniture and accessories. It is La Boutique, 14 Quai de la megisserie.

 

I got seriously wantywanty and had to leave before I bought half the lighting and a clock 3 ft across! Pia Jane Bijkerk's book, Handmade in Paris was a brilliant guide for artisan shops in the backstreets of Paris, full of treasures and unique crafts. The stationary shops she recommends in the Fourth Arrondissement were stunning, and I will have to return for the haberdashery shops alone!

We had amazing meals - in style at Le Petit Zinc in St-Germain-des-Pres, where I ate the best sea-bass of my life, cooked in clay, and modestly but deliciously at creperies and cafes. Did I mention the citrus souffle brought to the table in its copper pan with a glass of Grand Marnier on the side. Meals like this last a long time in the memory.

Richard and I had the last day to ourselves, and so we walked our way down a section of the Seine,

marvelled at the quality of the statuary everywhere you look, charmed by this little girl on one of the bridges listening for sound of the sea, or the Seine, in her shell,

and amazed that the art-deco artists of the period were commissioned to embellish even the feet of the lamp-posts!

Next, we sashayed down swanky Rue St  Honore, where I thought the old boy looked rather handsome in the sunshine,

and where he showed ample patience as I pointed endlessly at the incredible ironwork everywhere,

and wittered on about the glorious colour combination of sand, grey and black which is all around one in the architecture of Paris and has found its way into my heart and the colours of our home.

The Jardin des Tuileries, Place  de la Concorde (a magnificent 20 acre square right in the centre of the city and once site of the guillotine), the beautiful if austere Place Vendome and the Louvre, all within a half hour walk of eachother. We gawped still unsure but always astounded by the clash of old and new at The Louvre.

and some of the exhibits at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs were so beautiful, I wanted to dance a quick jig infront of the glass cabinets. I resisted the urge, but my heart was singing at some of these beauties, the carvings and glass over 500 years old,

It is that kind of place, Paris, it makes you want to dance and be merry, fall in love, eat too much, soak in a millenium of culture and ... giggle at gendarmes on rollerskates!