Christmas Jewellery Show 2019
Venue
When
Audience
Category
Christmas Jewellery Show
2 November 2019 - 11 January 2020
Craft Centre and Design Gallery, Leeds
Established and emerging jewellers are celebrated in this exhibition of contemporary jewellery. A selection of 5 jewellers in their first 5 years of business and 5 who have been making for 5+ years come together to highlight the craftsmanship behind jewellery making today.
5 Established Jewellers
Bea Jareno
Jewellery making is a life-long passion for Bea. She learnt watch-making as a young child with her grandfather and vividly remembers her first experience of seeing a ring being made; she knew from that moment that she was going to become a jeweller. Bea has been making her collections and bespoke jewellery in her own studio in London for 14 years. Every piece of her unique jewellery is handcrafted from the raw materials at her studio on Wimbledon where she believes that each piece finds its rightful owner. Bea uses raw, textured, precious metals including sterling silver, yellow and white gold which she combines with carefully selected gemstones, beads and pearls. She sources her materials in the UK and fair trade gemstones making her pieces ethical with an optional fair trade gold. Her pieces are minimal, graceful and come in many beautiful colours.
Jenifer Wall
Jenifer graduated with a BA Hons in Three Dimensional Crafts from the University of Brighton in 1996 and since then has been making jewellery, lockets, small dishes and containers in precious and occasionally base metals. Every piece is hand made in her studio in Hove, East Sussex, and is inspired by the natural world, with the two main sources of inspiration being seeds and seedpods and rocks and stones. In 2007 she moved studios and opened Brass Monkeys, with fellow jeweller Samantha Maund. Brass Monkeys sells Jenifer's work, as well as the work of around 40 other jewellery designer-makers. They called it Brass Monkeys because the studio that Sam and Jen shared before their current toasty home was freezing! Situated in an old mechanics' garage, there was no heating, concrete floors and very large gaps under the doors. Not to mention the open air toilet.
Kokkino
Melanie is the Leicester born jeweller behind Kokkino who took an Art Foundation Course in Loughborough. She discovered there that she particularly liked to work in small scale, so it seemed natural to go on the School of Jewellery in Birmingham, where she gained a BA in Jewellery and Silversmithing in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter. She then decided to travel and spent a couple of years in Greece, hence the company name which means ‘red’ in Greek. Over the years Melanie has worked to develop her own trademark style, utilising beautiful rich metal colours and textures, from the rich luxuriousness of silver blending to gold, to the bright pop of enamels and Formica. Melanie strives to create beautiful and timeless pieces with a modern twist, using considered design and exquisite craftsmanship.
Lindsey Mann
Lindsey graduated from Middlesex University with a First Class Degree in Jewellery in 2002. Drawing inspiration from themes of collecting memories she creates playful jewellery exploring a fleeting moment, a chance encounter or a material souvenir charged with meaning. Referencing shape, form, colour and pattern to realise each piece of jewellery she hopes to create something which has both familiar and yet foreign associations, perhaps triggering a vague memory for the viewer and hopefully raising a smile. Working from her studio in the wilds of Wiltshire, Lindsey constructs jewellery using hand-printed anodised aluminium, precious and non-precious metals and a host of found and formed materials. She uses a range of low-tech hand processes to create her work including screen and block printing onto anodised aluminium and traditional metalwork techniques. Anodised aluminium provides a perfect canvas for colour and pattern, something which has become somewhat of a trademark for Lindsey's jewellery.
Kate Wood
Largely self-taught, Kate makes contemporary beaded and chainwork jewellery which is admired for its delicacy, intricately detailed finish and lightness of touch. After graduating with a French degree Kate worked as a museum curator before turning her passion for jewellery-making into a career in 2005. Selling her first collections at London’s Spitalfields Market, she attracted a loyal clientele and attention from boutiques and galleries soon followed. The subtle, harmonious shapes of Kate’s beaded designs take their cue from natural forms and textures, and incorporate her love of beautiful gemstones and vintage glamour. Each piece is meticulously constructed by hand from multiple tiny beads, which are wrapped and ‘woven’ onto chains with hand-made silver pins. After 5 years at award-winning creative hub Cockpit Arts in London’s Holborn, Kate is now based in Bristol in the South West of England.
5 Emerging Jewellers
Julie Bailey
Julie’s studio workshop is based on the Lincolnshire Coast. In her work as a jeweller and a printmaker her relationship with both metal and paper is nuanced by such influences as eclectic as Japanese Ikebana and English garden design, from the found in the everyday and out in the wild, from interior and exterior landscapes. She creates a collection of studio jewellery with pale silver rich surfaces, embossed with handmade papers, detailed and contrasted with darker coloured metals, all within a framework of a minimal soft geometry. Julie lived in Singapore as a child, with her mother sharing her new skills of Ikebana and paper cutting. Exposed to the richness of far eastern cultures Julie began to make, construct, cut and arrange. Combining this early perspective with the later added skills of jewellery craftsmanship, fine art printmaking and working in gardens and with flowers, the editing and re-editing of surfaces, colours, textures and forms started to make sense. The interweaving of metal to paper and paper to metal evolving as a signature style around imprinting. Julie trained under master jeweller Brian Newble and was sponsored by the Platinum Advisory Board during this time. Her early jewellery work was highly commended 2 years running at the National Platinum Awards and exhibited at The Victoria & Albert Museum, Electrum Gallery London and the Basle International Fair. Ten years later she was able to return to her art career and completed a Fine Art Printmaking Degree at York St. John University being awarded the College Prize. After further study in Contemporary Fine Art Craft Practice and Teaching postgraduate degrees, she held posts as tutor/lecturer in both FE and HE and was involved in the founding and establishing of the annual York Open Studios Event. During a period living and working in France she opened her studio as a gallery to show the work of other fine art printmakers and studio jewellers, and was able to return fully to her own practice developing a collection of work based on her interests in both disciplines.
Hayley Grafflin
Hayley is a jewellery artist based in Liverpool recently graduating with a First-Class Honours degree in Jewellery and Metalwork from Sheffield Hallam University. Her work is centred around a deeply personal narrative of her past, present and future; of distant memories and dark influences. Taking inspiration from the urban environment in which she has immersed herself, Hayley intuitively creates flowing forms of weathered surfaces which evoke a sense of bittersweet melancholy. Using both traditional and innovative materials, she is able to subvert and surprise expectations, creating a tangible connection between herself and the wearer. Hayley continues to develop her practice through colour research and material experimentation from her workshop in the creative hub of Liverpool.
Becca Macdonald
Becca is a conceptual maker influenced by material experimentation who has been chosen as an International Jewellery London 2019 KickStart Winner. Following a degree in Textile Design from Chelsea College of Arts, Becca was employed in London design studios and artist’s workshops. She assisted in the creation of immersive sculptural installations, furniture and bespoke artworks. An introduction to jewellery making during a short course ignited a passion and influenced a change in direction and scale. With an interest in both fluid movement and organic shape, she explores the space where liquid becomes solid and hard meets soft.
Megan Brown
Megan comes from a Yorkshire family of worsted weavers and goldsmiths. Inspiring designs that mimic the flow of fabric, each piece is created by hand using traditional techniques that have been passed down from generation to generation. Her fascination with texture and form began at an early age whilst growing up surrounded by the samples her father would bring back from their textile Mill, Alfred Brown Ltd. She is constantly inspired by the world around her, with her most recent work influenced by the architectural form of the Foundation Louis Vuitton building in Paris. The sculptural forms of her designs are contrasted by the delicate texture of freshwater pearls and precious gemstones that are hand threaded onto each piece. Her passion for traditional jewellery techniques has inspired many of her collections; including the time-honored technique of hand engraving which allows her to blur the line between art and jewellery, using the sculptural forms as a canvas for her hand drawn designs. It is her appreciation for tradition and the precious nature and subtle elegance of ancient jewellery that gives her work its timeless quality; future heirlooms to be treasured.
Tina Macleod
Tina returned to Glenshiel in the West Highlands to set up her studio in 2015 after graduating from The Glasgow School of Art. She creates tactile pieces of jewellery that evoke a sense of place. The concept of the island and the unique atmosphere of the Hebridean coastal woodland are central to her work, capturing an essence of that sensed but unexplained aura often experienced within the forest. By using precious metal techniques that produce delicate but deliberate layers of surface texture, she is able to convey a sense of the ephemeral nature of the living landscape. Designing through making, she works intuitively with natural materials gathered from specific places, and by exploring hollow forms, creates jewellery which represents a connection to place which is realised through the importance of touch. Ultimately, each object becomes a representation of the viewer and wearer’s story, the original meaning transcends. The origin belongs to the maker, embedded within the piece but the meaning distorts and evolves as different people find their own connection with it.
Dates
2 November 2019 - 11 January 2020
Venue
City Art Gallery
The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AB
