As part of
the course, my class has been doing a unit called "Exploring Specialist
Techniques" which involves us researching something we are currently
interested in or something that we would be interested in finding out about (-
exploring). Then we focus on a selection of "practitioners" from our
chosen area within art and design - I am looking at the work of Colette
Hazelwood, The Hairy Growler Jewellery Company, Pierre Degen, and Dianne Fox. It
was incredibly difficult finding names of people who make jewellery that is
slightly different to the normal, retail varieties. I did find a site on people
using bottles for unusual things but the closest thing it had to jewellery was
a stand/holder for jewellery but it had no actual pieces using
bottles/bottletops.
As we are "exploring" these practitioners and their work, we also try out/experiment with some of our ideas that may involve or be inspired by the work of practitioners we look at.
Before I
started this course, my family and I went to Orkney for a few days and saw
leaflets advertising the "Craft Trail". Included in this
trail was the workshop of Sheila Fleet, a very well-known jewellery designer,
which we decided to go to. On arrival we
were given a tour of the workshop where we saw various people at work at the
different stages of the jewellery making process. We watched some jewellers using goose quills
to apply enamel on to the silver work and then people polishing the final item
of jewellery.
I really enjoyed this tour and it is part of the reason I started making
my own jewellery. This experience
increased my interest in jewellery making.
At present I don’t work with sterling silver or other metals or the
enamel I saw being used but it is something that I would like to progress
to. Up to now I have been using beads,
eye pins, headpins, various chains, jump rings, lobster clasps, toggles,
extender chains, as well as a few charms.
I have also tried to design a selection of rings, using both bought ring
bases and eye pins.
For this
unit I started out doing 'recycled jewellery' using milk bottle tops, crisp
packets and, later on, corks. Part
way through the project I thought it would make it even more interesting to
make it 'unusual jewellery' and include things like paperclips instead of
normal chain. I also tried using safety pins with a few beads on them.
'Unusual
Jewellery' means it could be made from anything that isn't normally used for
jewellery e.g. paperclips, crisp packets, bottle tops, corks, etc. which
are all unusual objects for jewellery making.
I started
with plastic milk bottle tops, making flat circles to use as charms for
necklaces, earrings and bracelets. I
have also used them as flat components for a bracelet and a necklace. Making
the flat discs was quite tricky to get cleanly cut discs/circles – first I used
metal hole punches of varying sizes with a wooden mallet but these did not
always give a clean cut. I ended up using the punches to make an outline of the
circle and then used scissors to complete the task which produced an acceptable
finished item. I then moved on to using
a Stanley knife for the larger circles to remove the bottle top rim which
seemed to work quite well. Compiling the
different sized circles into items of jewellery was relatively straight forward
without too many difficulties.
I then started experimenting with
crisp packets using the idea from a section in CBBC programme “Totally Rubbish”,
which gives measurements for the template for the components as well as instructions
on how to fold and assemble these into bracelets, belts and even placemats. The
first bracelet I made using this method, took a lot of patience (and chocolate!)
to get the hang of linking several components together and even more for the
final link as it was very fiddly to get the pieces to fit (and stay) together.
Up to this point I was using
normal chain for the necklaces and bracelets, (chain was not required for the
crisp packet items at this stage). However, I was given the suggestion/challenge
to find another material to use instead and I decided to use paperclips
connected by jump-rings to create an unusual style of chain to complete the
items of jewellery.
I then experimented making items
of jewellery using only paperclips – using a mixture of coloured, black and
white, gold and silver paperclips. While this had an interesting appearance, I
thought it looked better with two beads as an extra feature within each item –
I preferred this result to the original paperclip items without the beads. I
also experimented using a crisp packet component in the place of the beads
which I think had a similarly interesting effect.
I then started to think about possible
ways to incorporate wine corks into my designs. I used a jewellery drill to
make a hole through the centre of the cork so that I could use a headpin to
attach it to the paperclip chain. Some of the corks had patterns/logos already
printed on them so I used felt tip pens to fill in the blank areas with colours
such as purple, brown and green (most of the patterns where images of grapes).
I also tried varnishing some corks to see if it made any significant difference
to the appearance of the corks – this created some interesting effects.
My final experiment was using
candlewax. This happened quite by chance while I was helping clear some candles
at Christmas and one of the candles had a complete ring around its base. I
jokingly put it on my wrist as a bracelet and realised that it looked very
unusual and that I could actually use it, and some of the other really
interesting shapes from the candles, for my jewellery project. This was fun to
do but as it was made of candlewax, some of the pieces were very fragile and
easily broken and as a result were unable to be used as finished items. However,
I would like to experiment further using this material to see how else it could
be used within jewellery making.
I also experimented with combining different sizes of bottle top discs which then gave me the idea to try a similar design using small crisp packet components.
