Posts tagged Brooch

Meanings and Messages is the title of the current touring exhibition of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery (ACJ) that opened on 30th April 2022 at the St George’s Art Centre in Gravesend.

In my February blog I wrote about a brooch I made as my entry for this exhibition. I was thrilled that my piece Elpis (Hope) Brooch was selected as one of the 60 participants for this show and decided to travel to the opening day with my family.

Prior to the exhibitions, all entries were beautifully photographed by Simon B Armitt for the printed catalogue that was produced and the show was curated and displayed by the ACJ team, notably Exhibition Manager Joanne Haywood and ACJ Director, Terry Hunt.

Each entry came with a statement that explained the thoughts behind the piece. This statement was not shown next to the cabinets so as to encourage your own thoughts when viewing the pieces, but they were printed in the catalogue.

As the pandemic prevented many such physical shows from being organised it was a real pleasure to take part in the opening day and meet and catch up with old friends.

I wanted to use my May Blog to write about some of my own favourites of this exhibition:

All selected pieces were sorted into broad categories to make the display easier and these were:

1. Social Justice and Societal Change – A fairer world for all, technology, consumerism and conflict

2. Supernature – Celebrating the wonder of the natural world

3. Tributes and personal narratives – For our heroes and loved ones, personal reflection and biographical pieces

4. Our beautiful planet – Climate change, conservation, sustainability, ecology and animal rights.

5. Coronavirus (Covid-19) – Personal reflections and global impacts.

6. Love, hope and faith – Humanity, lore, talismans and amulets.

I was very moved by the different approaches of the makers to the theme of the exhibition and the thoughts behind the pieces when reading the catalogue. I will choose one piece from each section:

1. Social Justice and Societal Change – Z(eros) No Ones by Emma McGilchrist. I had the pleasure of meeting Emma at the opening and we chatted about our respective pieces in the exhibition and our thoughts behind it. I love the different layers of meaning behind this brooch, especially the one challenging Freud’s interpretation of women as Zero “a gap, absence of maleness and therefore lesser being.”

*Z(eros) No Ones* brooch by Emma McGilchrist

2. Supernature – City Garden Brooch by Sophie Martin-Glinel. Sophie’s brooch is a beautiful interpretation of her urban surroundings. She notices the beauty present even in her built-up, often industrial surroundings where one would not often suspect nature to be. Sophie notices that, and her brooch signifies how nature finds ways to fight its way through the most challenging elements of urbans landscapes.

3. Tributes and personal narratives – This section of the exhibition was particularly touching and it was hard to pick just one entry. So I picked two – both moving tributes to lost loved-ones.

a. Jane Sedgwick’s brooch Forget-Me-(K)not pays tribute to the skills passed on from mother to daughter and she uses threads from of her late mother’s sewing box to make her piece. Incorporating the threads her mother touched and worked with is a particularly moving memento – significant perhaps especially to a fellow maker, for whom materials and touch are important elements to how we live, view and interpret the world.

*Forget-Me-(K)not* brooch by Jane Sedgwick

b. Anne Walker’s brooch Fragility of Life: Dear Tam – This brooch is a beautiful tribute to the recently deceased Tamizan Savill, long-time member and Chief Executive of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery. The brooch is Anne’s final farewell letter to Tamizan. It is composed of long pieces of printed paper strips “with a jumble of messages and mixed emotions” which are loosely laced together and – like paper – signify the fragility of life.

*Fragility of Life: Dear Tam* brooch by Anne Walker

4. Our beautiful planet – Before it’s too Late Brooch by Sarah Jane Wilmott: Sarah’s brooch is a call to action to remind ourselves that so much more still needs to be achieved to tackle climate change. The brooch is made from charcoal and fine silver, with the charcoal leaving a mark on the wearer – just like human action has had on the planet. A beautifully evocative piece that should all make us think and renew our commitment to preserve and protect our planet.

5. Coronavirus (Covid-19) – Lonely Fish brooch by Mandy Nash: Mandy’s brooch resonated strongly with me. The impact of the pandemic on children and young people was particularly strong and are still felt. The absence of social contact with friends, the known rhythm of life and school and a certain predictability were hard to cope with. Although speaking to the children about these things, adults struggled with them too. Anxieties remained and – as depicted in the brooch – children and adults still appear on the outside as ‘jolly fish’ but are in fact “struggling to keep the head above water” and feel like they are “swimming against the tide.”

6. Love, hope and faith – All You Need Is Love brooch by Joanne Haywood. My own brooch also came in this category, but one brooch I particularly liked was Jo’s. The warmth and compassion of her thoughts really stirred me. To respond with kindness, compassion and understanding to other people in need and especially in such turbulent times as the last few years, not only helps others, but also lifts our own spirits and adds meaning to our own lives. The use of her materials, colour and symbolisms underlines the above.

As part of the main exhibition, exhibitors were also asked to send in samples or test pieces they had made for their brooches. This was to enable especially visually impaired persons to experience the exhibition. This was a particularly lovely part of the exhibition. As the actual brooches were shown in glass cabinets it was fantastic to be able to touch and feel the materials and textures used in the pieces.

If you are able to go I would encourage you to see the exhibition and/or buy the catalogue to read the thoughts behind each piece. The following are the tour dates and locations:

• 30th April 2022 – 29th May 2022: St Georges Arts Centre - Gravesham Borough Council - in partnership with LV21

• 1st -3rd July 2022: Exeter University – Conference Pop-Up exhibition

• 19th September - 28th October 2022: Vittoria Street Gallery – Birmingham School of Jewellery

• 16th November – 21st Dec 2022: Mission Gallery in partnership with Swansea College of Art UWTSD

• 9th January – 24th February 2023: Goldsmiths Centre, London

• 4th April – 18th June 2023: New Brewery Arts, Cirencester

exhibition, DesignHendrike Barz-Meltzer30 May 2022exhibition, ACJ, Meanings and Messages, Brooches, BroochComment

Blog 2: The Greek Shard - Elpis Brooch

Another cold, but sunny morning. I have just walked around the frosty field, trying to order my thoughts for the day’s work ahead. It has been a busy few weeks since my last blog and for my second I wanted to follow on from where I left: ‘my Greek journey’. The visit to the museum was accompanied in the weeks since by more reading and listening to audio books on the same theme. The Greek heroes, stories and gods are everywhere in my head. I studied the various photos I took, the books I bought and already had and I thought that in this blog I want to show what all this has resulted in so far.

So, how does a piece come into being? What is my process for translating an inspiration, an idea into a piece? I will try to explain this by following the design and making journey of my new Elpis brooch.

Inspiration

Going in my mind through the rooms of the British Museum once more, recalling the pieces I saw in the cases, the books as well as other archaeological artefacts, I was trying to distil what so captured my imagination. It was most obviously the patterns on the vases, the stories, but it was also something else. It was this magical connection between a ceramic shard – found under layers of soil, showing half a pattern of a once beautiful vase, retelling the story of a mythical Greek hero perhaps – and its finder or viewer. It is this shard – this tangible eye-witness to a past so long ago – that allows the imagination of the viewer to connect with this past, to travel back in time and to immerse oneself in the stories of imagined lives lived long ago.

But even more, I think it is especially this shard, this broken part of something once-whole, this half-pattern, this hint of a story – now lost – painted on the vase that inspires the imagination. What was the vase like as a whole? What figure was painted there? What story was it trying to tell? These are the things I think are magical about the pieces I saw and these were the elements I was trying to use in my work.

Brief

To focus the mind deadlines always help to get things done. A call for submissions for an exhibition entitled Meanings and Messages by the Association for Contemporary Jewellery (ACJ) seemed the perfect opportunity to focus my ideas and design / make a brooch which would hopefully also become the starting point for this year’s collection.

Design Process

With all the above in mind I started by drawing patterns and shapes. This process is usually free and just ‘happens’. What emerged, were rounded, irregular shapes with Greek-inspired golden patterns. The idea of the accidental, the damaged, the half-lost pattern fascinated me.

Thinking about the brief of ‘Meanings and Messages’ I wanted to include something subtle, a message not immediately visible but upon closer inspection revealing a story and endowing meaning to the piece.

One of the Greek characters I was particularly fond of was Eos, ‘rosy-fingered goddess of dawn’. I was drawn to her tragic love story with the mortal Tithonus and liked her depiction as bringing with each sunrise to mankind a sense of hope, renewal and the possibility for a new beginning.

After some deliberation I felt, however, this was somewhat too subtle and chose instead the more well-known spirit of Elpis, the spirit of Hope. She was amongst other spirits in a jar given by Zeus to Pandora. When Pandora opened the jar, all the evil spirits escaped into the world. Elpis alone remained trapped in the jar when - in horror and despair at what she had done – the lid was hastily closed.

Whilst interpretations differ, I like the depiction of Elpis as a young woman, bearing flowers, the hopeful bringer of spring and renewal. Whilst no longer relying on benevolent gods for our fortunes, it is still Hope for a better world and Hope for things to heal and improve that often drives us forward in this world.

These were the thoughts I was hoping to impart in the piece and specifically in the patterns on the front of the piece. Developing the initial ideas led to further drawings and the final design I settled on (images below).

The golden shapes were meant to be like an accidental sample of a continuing pattern in the stylised shape of blossoms with the barely visible lettering of ELPIS underneath, inviting questions as to the meaning of the word and the whole piece.

I wanted the main part of the brooch to be rounded, curved and irregular, reminiscent of a ceramic shard found in an archaeological dig. Thinking about the piece functioning as a brooch, I wanted the structure to be part of the design and opted for holding the ‘shard’ in a setting, similar to the frame in which a ceramic shard may be held or displayed in a museum cabinet. This also allowed me to use the frame as a structure to hold the brooch pin mechanism securely.

Construction

I started by making the silver ‘shard’ with the gold pattern and stamping the letters ELPIS into the silver. Getting the size and shapes of the gold leaf shapes and positioning them correctly was paramount to the design. Once on the silver, the gold pieces could not be changed (other than starting again, of course). The gold was applied in the Keum-Boo technique. See here for more info on the technique.

Making the frame to hold the shard was next, followed by making the pin mechanism and the prongs to hold the shard in place. There are many ways to make a pin mechanism. I wanted a hinged mechanism, made entirely from silver and therefore opted for a slightly heavier pin thickness. The pin was also to have a pin rest at the front of the hinge and was to be restricted in its opening movement to 90°. Once made, the components were soldered onto leaf-shaped plates on the back of the frame.

When making the prongs I needed to consider their position as well as the curvature of the shard. This required the making of small steps within the prongs to securely hold the shard on the frame. When all was finished I set the shard onto the frame and riveted the pin into the hinge mechanism. Below are some images of the finished piece.

I was really happy with the result and felt that I had managed to capture some of the magic the Greek artefacts hold for me. It remains to be seen whether the piece will be chosen for the exhibition. Fingers crossed! In any case, it was a good starting point and I have since made further pieces on the same theme.

Inspiration, Visual Diary, Design ProcessHendrike Barz-Meltzer23 February 2022Design, Design Process, Brooch, Brooches, Keum-Boo, Greek patternsComment