Calendar: May 2010

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Another jewellery auction

Just a quick note today … there is another jewellery auction in Melbourne soon at Sotheby’s; full catalogue here. There sadly isn’t much here to take my fancy, but I’m intrigued by:

• the enamel pendant brooch from 1900 for its delicacy [link]
• Edwardian diamond brooch [link]
• in the ‘what-the?‘ category, a 90ct carved emerald necklace, estimate in excess of $100k [link]
• while I’m not personally a fan of Faberge eggs, there is one here [link]

RMIT Year 1, Semester 1, Enamelling #1 and #2

First year, first semester, Surface Articulation – Enamelling, project #1: colour sampler

Simple first step was a colour tester, to teach us the basics.

enamel colour tester

First year, first semester, Surface Articulation – Enamelling, project #2: testers

This next little project was to introduce various treatments for enamelling … foil, enamel threads and stencil/sifting.

… previous post in this series: RMIT Year 1, Semester 1, Jewellery #4 …

My jewellery collection #16

This is the latest addition to my jewellery collection – a gentle enamelled brooch by Claire O’Halloran.

[photograph published with artist permission; amended copyright notice: image not to be reproduced without permission]

Claire O'Halloran brooch; amended copyright notice as above

In late last year I asked Claire to make this for me, after missing out on a brooch of hers at the 2009 RMIT G&S jewellery auction. I went back to the original site that had an image of the auction brooch, however it has since been cleared of images – sad. My story about that auction is here.

The colours were a collaboration – I’ve always had a love of dark blue enamel, and the brooch Claire wore on the night of the auction had the same pink (I think?!) and I had in mind they’d look lovely together. I am so happy with this piece – it’s about 40mm in diameter, it feels beautiful and smooth and satisfyingly weighty in the hand (not too much though), and it’s just lovely to wear.  Actually, I’m particularly fond of wearing it on a blue knit cardigan over a lovely black and white print retro-style wrap dress.

Previously I’ve written about Claire in an artist profile and when she had her first solo exhibition last year; also, her own website has some very lovely images of her work.

As this piece is the most recently aquired, I’m sad to say that this series of posts on ‘my jewellery collection’ will be a little quiet for a now … at least until I add to my collection again (which I do hope will be this year!).

… last post on my jewellery collection #15 …