Crows and things

I like crows. And when I say "crows", I mean rooks, ravens, magpies - all the corvids, really. They're remarkably intelligent birds, and they always look like they're having such fun when they fly. I also love the way that every morning I can hear rooks cawing as they fly over my house. So lately I've been making crow jewellery. I've mostly been etching drawings into silver, but I've also made some earrings by piercing out some crow silhouettes. I'm actually really happy with the earrings - they've been oxidised to make sure the crows are black, and this make them stand out quite nicely, I think. The etched pieces are very much drawn in my style. I'm no great draughtsman, but I think my slightly scratchy style works pretty well etshed into silver. I'm going to do more of both, as they are quite relaxing for me when I'm getting irritated by wire melting while trying to make skeletons.

A slight moral quandary

I like the Arts and Crafts Movement a lot. I agree with many of its principles, such as the idea that objects should be made by craftsmen who had a hand in the design as well as the making, and that the maker should take pride in their work and should also be rewarded justly for their time. I like that the proponents of the Arts and Crafts Movement thought everyone should be able to have beautifully made items. I think people should be able to have lovely things that will last a lifetime. Quality is important: people don't want to have to buy the same item over and over again because it is shoddily made. The problem with this is that it's expensive. The basic cost of well-made and ethically sound crafted items is always going to be more than factory produced things. You might pay more for a designer t-shirt, of course, but it would have cost a lot less to produce (we all know about sweatshops, for example!). So, of course, not everyone can buy something handcrafted. When I was a student, I didn't have much money. That meant when I needed a bowl or a mug I'd buy something cheap from Sainsbury's. Of course, being cheap they broke or chipped easily (or disappeared as things do from student houses). I think what I'm going to do from now on is similar to how I buy eggs. If I have the money to buy organic, free-range eggs, I'll buy eggs. Otherwise I just won't have them. If I have the money to buy a handmade bowl I'll buy it. If I don't, I'll save up until I do and, until then, make do without. Of course, this is only my personal solution to my odd moral dilemma and there may well be a better solution (what if I never have money for eggs again? I haven't figured out what I'd do in that situation!).

Bird skeleton in glass dome

I recently made a new piece of anatomical/curiosity art. This is a bird skeleton made entirely of silver, housed in a glass dome with a mahogany base. I have to say I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. My work at university was based on skeletons, but I was working in steel. It's very different to work with - the joining especially. The steel skeletons were mostly spot welded, with some gas welding. When I left university and had to work without the glorious workshops, I realised I had to work out new ways of making things. The problem with making complex things out of silver is that unless you're very, very careful when you heat the metal, you risk re-melting the joins you've just done and undoing all your painstaking work. I think the number of skeletons I'd made while at university helped, though, because I had an idea of what order I had to do certain things in. Clearly all the time I've spent fiddling around with little bits of wire and scratching my head while looking at drawings has helped!

I think my next anatomical project is going to be a little more difficult, possibly based on a horse. Bird skeletons are my comfort zone, in a way. I started my skeleton making with them, and whenever I have to work out new ways of doing something, it's to them that I return. So I'm going to force myself out of my comfort zone and do something that may go horribly wrong - which is why I think my experiments are going to be in copper. It's heartbreaking melting something which you've spent hours on, but melting something out of a material which has a relatively high intrinsic value is just a little more galling. I'm looking forward to the challenge, though!

Anatomical Heart Card

I love this pop-up heart card by tracychong on etsy. Anatomy art is going through a bit of a resurgance at the moment. There's even a blog devoted to it! The thing I especially like about this card is the simplicity of the design. A heart is a complex thing, but this is very simple - and yet it's still perfectly obvious what it is. If someone sent me this, it'd be one I kept!

Craft - Art's ugly stepsister

I always feel sorry for craft. It's a bit of a dirty word - people think of craft shows as being twee. There's so much more to it than that. Craft is art. It's much more than merely making something. There's design in it and there's a huge knowledge base. I've studied jewellery and metalwork for two years in evening courses and for three years as a university degree. I think I know almost nothing. There are people who can make the most amazing things with apparently little effort - blacksmiths are a good example. One of my university tutors, Julian Coode, is incredibly talented and knowledgable about blacksmithing. He can pick up a bar of steel and turn it, very quickly, into something beautiful. He makes it look effortless. But here's the thing: it's not. Blacksmithing is difficult. People who make it look easy are extremely good at what they do and that takes years of learning and practice. Apprenticeship schemes for blacksmithing can take 5 years. Traditionally they could have lasted even longer.
Blacksmithing isn't the only craft that takes years to learn. They all do, really. Every material is different. There are always new ways to approach making - you can invent your own way of working. That's what the fun of craft is. It's so flexible! It's poorly defined - and that's part of the joy of it. You can make your own boundaries and there is always something new to learn.

You can take short courses with Julian in Farnham, Surrey. Details are here. He's an excellent tutor - very patient, understanding, good at communicating and absolutely lovely. It's partly because of him that some of my jewellery contains elements of blacksmithing!

Modernist Crafts

It's not the most likely sounding subject. When most people think of Modernism, they think of machined objects made using industrial processes, not handcrafted things. But the Bauhaus was a school of arts and crafts. The students studied many different making techniques, such as metalwork, cabinet-making, weaving and pottery, not just design. Of course, the most famous pieces of Modernist design are still mass produced, like the famous Marcel Breuer chair, but there are many pieces which have been forgotten. Marianne Brandt is quite well known, although that's a rather subjective term, as most people probably haven't heard of her. She was at the Bauhaus from 1923-29, and in fact ran the metalworking workshop for a year of that time. She was also a photographer, sculptor and designer of other things, but it's her metalwork that I think is particularly successful. Her tea infuser is a wonderful piece of design. It is well proportioned, practical and just a pleasure to look at. I like the rivets that hold the ebony handle to the silver body: not being afraid to show how something is made is a Modernist trait (it's also something the Arts and Crafts Movement is famous for - one of the many ways in which the two movements are similar). The original teapot would have been handmade, but I doubt the reproductions are. But that's not a problem to me: the Modernists liked mass production, as long as the original design was good. And this one is.

An explanation of some of my recent work

I think skeletons are beautiful. I like bones for many reasons and a large part of that is because they are the most lasting part of a creature. I find it fascinating that some bones have lasted for millions of years as fossils and that so much can be understood about a creature from what has happened to its bones. I like skulls especially. They're so elegant, with such graceful lines. For the last few years I've been spending a lot of my spare time drawing skeletons from photographs, in museums and from the small collection I have. Part of this interest is linked in with my love of cabinets of curiosities. Museums grew out of these collections, and it's usually the museums which have been less tampered with that I find more interesting. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is a cornucopia of strange and wonderful things that a reasonably eccentric man collected. I want my house to be like that, a goldmine of unlikely things gathered together. Some of my cirrent jewellery relfects that. I know people don't necessarily want a huge museum cabinet of oddities, but they might want to show their love of unusual things, like skeletons, with what they wear. So I'm providing a way of collecting things that's a bit more portable.