Dress Code Glamour

1st July - 23rd September 2017

 

Dress to impress with this stunning collection of jewellery ideal for special occasions or dinner parties.  Fabulous conversation starters including earrings, necklaces, bracelets, brooches and rings made from silver, gold, precious and semi-precious stones and glass.

 

Kate Wood

Largely self-taught, Kate makes contemporary beaded and chain work jewellery which is admired for its delicacy, intricately detailed finish and lightness of touch.  After graduating with a French degree Kate worked as a museum curator before turning her passion for jewellery making into a career in 2005.  Selling her first collections at London’s Spitalfields Market, she attracted a loyal clientèle and attention from boutiques and galleries soon followed.  The subtle, harmonious shapes of Kate’s beaded designs take their cue from natural forms and textures, and incorporate her love of beautiful gemstones and vintage glamour.  Each piece is meticulously constructed by hand from multiple tiny beads, which are wrapped and ‘woven’ onto chains with hand-made silver pins.  Kate's latest collection, 'Talisman', synthesises diverse influences, encompassing jewellery pieces from ancient civilisations, India and the Middle East as well as 1950's diamanté and chain-mail.  These new pieces explore chain work techniques to create a tactile, fabric-like structure reminiscent of crochet or lace, which glints in the light.  

 

Kokinno

Renowned for her exquisite designs, Melanie Ankers founded Kokkino in 2003 and quickly became one of the UK’s most popular designers of contemporary handmade jewellery.  Her work combines the timeless appeal of bright silver, warm 24ct gold and a stunning colour palette of enamels.  Striking, sophisticated and yet so wearable, every piece in Kokkino’s vast collection is lovingly handmade in her Worcester studio.  The classic elegance and versatility of Melanie’s designs alongside her exceptionally high-quality workmanship means that Kokkino makes the perfect gift for loved ones or for you to treat yourself.

 

Charlotte Verity

Charlotte is a designer maker of contemporary art jewellery, specialising in silver and small scale hot glass techniques.  Her pieces of jewellery are often inspired by light;they reflect or refract light from external sources, or emit their own light through fluorescence or phosphorescence, while other pieces are inspired by vibrant city lights at night.  Charlotte loves to juxtapose vivid colours against monochromatic schemes and incorporate intricate detail into the work. Coloured glass components and gemstones ensures she can maintain bright, colourful elements in the pieces.  Current collections combine blown glass components with silver, gold, lustres, enamels and faceted stones, and most recently she has been conducting experiments using vitreous enamels.

 

Scarlett French

Scarlett's work is primarily based around research in to visual aspects of scientific chaos.  This stemmed from a fascination with the eerie beauty and mystery of fractal geometry, which led Scarlett to experiment and look into ways of formulating her own visual chaos.  Scarlett did this by experimenting with visual feedback loops.  This is iteration that takes place when a video camera is pointed at its own monitor.  When the camera is nudged and manipulated the screen quickly overloads in to a form of chaos revealing itself as beautiful, infinite structures of undulating pattern and form.  Photography and experimental film work play a key role in the aesthetics of her pieces, as do spontaneous colour, steady movement and growth of pattern and form.  The colourful nature of Scarlett's research led her to use enamel within her jewellery where she uses a mixture of vitreous enamel (powdered) and industrial enamel (liquid) in her work.  It's important for Scarlett to try to challenge the conventional view of enamel so she uses an array of different techniques to ensure her enamel is matte, expressive and tactile.  As she has developed as a jeweller Scarlett has began to integrate new technologies into her work with her latest collectiuon combining 3D printing, casting in silver, touches of enamel and 18ct gold to produce bold, confident and unique pieces of jewellery that empower the wearer.

 

Lauren Bell-Brown

Fairies and fairytales have always been a big part of Lauren's life; from the magic of the tooth fairy, the fairy tree she spent hours under at her Grandparents’ house when she was a young girl, through to the intricately detailed houses she discovered in the works of the Grimm Brothers.  Lauren had a very romanticised, 'Disneyfied' ideal of these tales, but quickly came to realise that these were actually a re-telling of a much darker original tale.  Strangely, she much preferred the latter.  Building upon her understanding of traditional fairytale aesthetics, her jewellery portrays their classic beauty whilst incorporating the Grimm Brothers’ more sinister narrative.  Each piece conceals unexpected dark details from finding the Grimm’s re-telling much more intriguing.  Ornately detailed and meticulously hand crafted wax carvings and cuttlefish castings combined with needlepoint embellishment add drama to the fantasy of her work, offering a subversive twist to the concept of the familiar ‘happily ever after'.  Lauren loves to research, so dissecting the Grimm Brothers’ stories and pulling out hidden twists and detail was such a pleasure for her, and the images they inspire reveal the process of Lauren's interpretation.  Lauren wants the audience of her jewellery to explore the pieces and make their own observations; the tiny details are there to be discovered.  The more the audience looks the more Lauren hopes her own process of understanding the narrative is revealed.

 

Amy Leigh

Amy creates unique contemporary jewellery with a reduced environmental impact.  She has a very experimental approach to designing and the arbitrary nature of her chosen technique means that no two pieces are the same.  At the essence of Amy’s work is a fascination with materials changing state from liquid to solid.  Amy's signature technique involves pouring molten metal (typically pewter) into water, rapidly reducing its temperature and shocking it back in to its solid state creating intriguing sculptural forms.  These are then combined with Eco Resin and Eco Silver (Eco Silver is an environmentally friendly alternative made from 100% recycled sterling silver and Eco Resins replace petroleum based carbon with renewable plant-based carbon. The raw materials going into the resin are co-products or waste products of other industrially important processes helping to reduce the environmental impact of the end product).  

 

Hannah Bedford

Hannah Bedford is one of the leading makers of contemporary fine jewellery using the art of granulation.  Each piece is meticulously handcrafted in her studio at Cockpit Arts in London.  For over a decade Hannah has pushed the technical and creative boundaries of the granulation process. Influenced by organic growth patterns she has explored ever more complex and intriguing ways to adjoin, layer, texture and entwine surfaces with handcrafted granules.  Fine granulation captures precious stones and interlaces between surfaces, linking necklaces and bangles, embellishing delicate earrings and weaving across engagement and wedding rings.  Her designs often play with scale and form, combine contrasting precious metals or feature statement stones.  Minute granules may be embedded with exquisite diamond detailing or hidden surfaces covered with delicate granulation; a beautiful secret unbeknown to all but the wearer. 

 

John & Dawn Field

John and Dawn  are contemporary jewellery makers from Yorkshire and Lancashire who met while sudying for BA (Hons) degrees in 3D Design and Fine Art over twenty five years ago.  Since graduating they have successfully earned a living from making and selling their contemporary jewellery ranges through quality craft centres and art galleries nationwide, as well as in over 75 Dazzle selling exhibitions.  The Asymmetrical range features a selection of 12 different gemstones, some of which are made to their specifications and are therefore unique to them.  The charm of the range is the use of asymmetry, with one earring having a gemstone and the other some brass decoration.