Narrative Jewellery

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 Brooch" is featured on the cover and there is an essay by me inside. Friends and colleagues, Jo Pond and Jack Cunningham have both written for and feature in the book, which is a major overview of the current field of "narrative jewellery". I'm proud to be able to call author, Mark Fenn, a friend and I know that he's worked incredibly hard for the last couple of years pulling this together, so it is great to see it finally finished. You can order copies from Amazon.

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Lots going on since my last post, including the British Art Medal Society prize-giving for their prestigious Student Project, where students are invited to create a medal to a very open brief. The exhibition of this project is at the Vittoria Street Gallery at the moment and the event was not only well-attended but it was great that loads of the prize-winners had travelled to collect their prizes.

The exhibition continues until the 17th November and is definitely worth a visit if you are in the Jewellery Quarter.

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The BA Jewellery and Object students are gearing up to creating their graduation collections (already!) and had a small exhibition to show off their initial thoughts.

There are some intriguing projects being developed:

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Also last week, I went to Lustre with colleagues, a very high-quality and well-curated selling exhibition of some of the most interesting makers in the UK.

I do like this show very much: everything is of to the highest standard and the atmosphere is lovely. Additionally, they actively encourage our graduates and offer them stands as part of their "Young Meteors" and "One Year On" sponsorship programmes. Lois Wiseman was one of our graduates who was exhibiting:

And colleagues, Drew Markou and Sally Collins had a joint stand:

I bought a rather nice hand-woven blanket by Sarah Tyssen which was meant as a throw but which I will be wearing!

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Last week, I had the pleasure of inviting commercial jewellery designer, Layla McCook into the School to lead a class in the techniques of classic fine-jewellery rendering:

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After the enthusiasm shown online for my new nut rings (the repair series):

I returned to Dungeness to collect the very last of the split nuts which prompted me to create these in the first place.

I love going to Dungeness and always find something new to photograph:

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A book I ordered on the recommendation of Anastasia Young arrived this week, a guide to a form of Korean inlay, Ipsa.

It is truly fascinating and the flat-surface inlay is very different from the manner in which we do it in the west. There is a wonderful series of photographs of the work being done on this blog here.

I am definitely going to try this at some point very soon.

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Took some fantastic shots of me annealing and cleaning the nuts found at Dungeness. Very dramatic!

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Interesting weekend as I did a "takeover" of the Craftspace Instagram feed on Sunday.

Good morning, Craftspace! Take-over if the Craftspace Instagram this morning by @justified_sinner - coffee in bed with some Anthony Burgess.

A post shared by Craftspace (@craftspace_) on Nov 18, 2017 at 11:47pm PST

This is the first of the posts. There are about twenty posts further to that one!

Including this image of the nut rings with their internal "scaffolding" being constructed.

More on these soon!