Working precious metals using wild stone tools found in the Sussex landscape for over two decades.
Why I use stones, or wild tools…
I have developed my signature style using ‘wild tools’, stones that I find in the landscape. I’m often asked why stones?
Well, it stems from my interest in American Indian culture that began when I first travelled to Canada as a child in the late 1960’s. We visited a tourist attraction where half a dozen First Nation women taught me a dance. The women had beautiful smiles, ornate beaded necklaces and soft fringed garments. They were kind to me and I thought everything about them was marvellous.
Visiting the Western States over the years, I bought contemporary tribal textiles in Colorado, Hopi and Zuni jewellery in Arizona and on a road trip in1994 I found a book, ‘American Indian Jewellery of the South West’, by Dexter Cirillo. There is a section about a Warm Springs Apache woman called Jan Loco, who cut her metal with poultry shears, who would go into the desert, find a boulder and use a rock to run a tracery of texture over the silver in a wish to imbue the piece with 'the spirit of the place’.
I loved that idea. What also captured my imagination was the thought of working in the desert or in the landscape using found tools and a minimal kit of hand-tools. During my degree there was an optional module called ‘Transformation of Surfaces’. I took the opportunity to visit beaches on the South Coast as well as the far North of Scotland to find stone tools with which to work my metal and I continued this process during my MA.
Whilst living in the East End of London and working on the Picture Desk of a national Sunday broadsheet newspaper, I trained in Silversmithing, Jewellery & Allied Crafts at London Metropolitan University, completing a BA in 2001 and going straight on to do a master’s degree with in 2003, after which my work was selected for the prestigious International Graduation Show at Galerie Marzee, the world’s largest contemporary jewellery gallery.
In 2004 I was granted the Maker Development Award from the Crafts Council and had the honour of having my work represented by the iconic Electrum Gallery on South Molton Street in London’s West End.
In 2005 I established my studio on the East Sussex coast where I design and make jewellery by hand using local wild stone tools and traditional gold-smithing techniques, alongside my husband, a photographer and lecturer, and our skater son who makes grillz and dental jewellery.
I’m proud to have shown regularly at Goldsmiths’ Fair, the UK’s premier event for jewellery and silverware since 2014 and I showed with Goldsmiths’ Fair in April at Collect 2023 at Somerset House.
I’ve shown with MAD About Jewellery at the Museum of Art & Design in New York; before Brexit I had work in wonderful galleries in Munich and Lille and showed at Sieraad in Amsterdam.
I’m a member of Contemporary Applied Arts and the Association for Contemporary Jewellery. I exhibit regularly with The Sussex Guild of which I am a Trustee member.
In 2023 I spent a fascinating three months as Artist in Residence at the exceptional Department of Gemstones & Jewellery at Trier University, Campus Idar-Oberstein, Germany, in partnership with the fascinating and extraordinary Jakob Bengel Foundation. You can read more about this in the Journal pages.
Where I find my wild tools…
These days I work mainly in the comfort of my studio but I still use the same favourite hammer stones that I collected in 1999 on a trip to the Sussex coast.
After seventeen years of looking, another hammer stone finally found me on the beach in St Leonard’s On Sea, so thankfully I now have a slightly larger, heavier hammer stone with which I have also bonded. My anvil stone is the same one that I’ve used since 2000. I still have a bit of a yen to spend a year living and working on the road, like Steinbeck did in ‘Travels with Charley’, maybe one day.