One-Off Pieces
I frequently work on pieces that do not belong in a collection - stand-alone ideas that come to me in single-file
I may revisit them conceptually from time to time, usually to refine them or say them more eloquently in a new medium. My Hello Earthling for instance is takeX2 of the desing which finally found its culmination.
Hello Earthling ; vitreous enamel, painting on enamel, opal, amber and filigree metalsmithing
(Private Collection)
What I initially wrote about this brooch/necklace :
He is the most me thing I have ever made. Zero compromises, entirely bombastic, sinfully precious with techniques from fabrication to multiple bezel setting to vitreous enamel painting to filigree detailing - a brooch\necklace combo dream for an alien Tsarina, created entirely to make people smile because I am just so tired of sadness - here is my ‘Hello Earthlings’. He’s a visitor. But we are all visitors. We just don’t know how long we are visiting for. So maybe while we are here let’s just have fun when if we can, when we can. Hopefully just looking at him and his merry little greeting (in liquid gold 😂) can bring on a smile.
The Giantess
(private collection)
Painted enamel, cloisonné and filigree - meet to form this large protective amulet that may be worn as a necklace. Here the concept was the woman-shaman, straddled of the physical and spiritual, with an interior ‘portal’ world. I revisited a composition I’ve repeated now in multiple collections, an image I feel the need to keep returning to - a gold path leading to a keyhole pyramid.
The statuettes that inspired this series were found in and around the ancient temples of the Maltese islands, now mysterious ‘doorways to nowhere’ made of giant stone, aligned with heavenly bodies and equinoxes, stargates whose keys we have since lost.
No Rose Without a Thorn appeared in a few collections. The piece featured in a thinkpiece video I made about enamelling which as it happens is a great procedural insight into my process start to finish - take a look here.