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.

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.