RMIT Year 2, Semester 1, Jewellery #2

Second year, first semester, Jewellery, project #2: ‘Longing, yearning, desire and the need to covet’

My thoughts started with the longing and yearning to belong … to belong to a group, to a community, to an ancestry, to a personal history. The first sketch I made was below – an amulet, over the heart, connecting with one of the ancient original intent of personal ornament.

from project sketch book

The first piece referred to places where you feel like you belong, even though you’ve never been there before. I’ve had this experience a number of times over the years, and one of my strongest responses was in the ancient landscape around Avebury. The shape strangely reflected my original drawing – done before any investigations into Avebury.

image used for front of amulet (cannot remember where I found this)

The body of the piece was made using press-forming. It was pretty tricky to get the depth and accurate edges for joining – I needed to use shapes carved from perspex, one for each back and front with a brass edge piece.

for fly-press

After pressing the fine silver, the gold rivets were applied to the front piece, then the form soldered together, the gold leaf applied by kuem-boo (applied with pressure under heat, no soldering); the chain made, and voila.

This is approximately 50mm high and wide, and approx 25mm deep, and has a nice weight and feels wonderful in the hand. This is the piece that I was reminded of when I recently saw a new piece by Karla Way – it’s amazing how some shapes are just inate to humans.

I’ve often thought of changing the chain … re-working this piece to make it more to my current taste …

image not to be reproduced without permission

The second piece was more immediately personal than ancient, and is a small pendant (with the little press formed shape in the above image, with the outline taken from a photograph of a standing stone from Avebury) with a picture of my mum when she was a tiny infant. So cute.

image not to be reproduced without permission

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