Voting now closed for your favourite Exclusive Jewellery/Keepsake Piece made by some of our makers in The Jewellery Show and In the Spotlight...and the winner is Adele Taylor! Congratulations Adele!
VOTING NOW CLOSED!
When we invited our carefully curated jewellers to take part in The Jewellery Show and In the Spotlight Show we also invited them to make an exclusive piece to celebrate our special anniversary. Some of them handcrafted jewellery and small keepsake items with significant meaning to them and we asked you to vote for your favourite. You can explore the fascinating stories behind each of the makers and their exclusive jewellery pieces below. Your winner, Adele Taylor, will be invited to showcase her work with us in a special showcase in 2023 so you’ll be able to enjoy her work here once again.
Jed Green - as seen In the Spotlight
"My work references important milestones and memories, looking back at past work, bringing elements back into focus. ‘From Necklace 2012 to Brooch 2022' made for The Craft Centre and Design Gallery's 40th anniversary, involved disassembling a necklace stocked in the gallery in 2012 reusing the components and transforming them into a brooch with my new colours for 2022."
Jed has been featured in a number of our shows from our remarkable archive and we really are delighted to welcome her back. You may have seen her jewellery collections in Alchemy 7 in 2007 and In the Spotlight in 2012. Jed is inspired using inexpensive everyday materials to create unique and precious pieces. Borosilicate clear glass tubes, commonly used in science and industry are cut, carved and lamp worked to form various shapes. Moving pieces or clusters of these are linked together by drilling and pinning. Colour is applied by painting the interior of the glass wall and applying handmade transfers to pattern the outside. She is constantly searching for new ways to express her creativity and inspirations in glass. There is a fragility and lightness in her work and the use of colour and form make each piece unique and eminently collectable. “Experiencing a spark of an idea, then trying to create it in glass always seems impossible…until its done! The transformation from simple clear glass tubes into soft sculptural forms and experimenting with colour, texture, pattern and shape is intrinsic to my work.”
“I was so thrilled to be asked to be part of this special 40th anniversary exhibition. Invited to make a special piece, I decided to create a unique link to our past. I rediscovered a necklace exhibited in the gallery in 2012, deconstructed it and remade it into a brooch.”
Gail Klevan - as seen In the Spotlight
"Specially commissioned to celebrate The Craft Centre’s 40th Anniversary, this necklace of organic pebble shapes in green and red colours of nature with deep blue touches of twilight sky is both calming and energising. Assembled from articulated resin panels, it subtly changes form as it is worn. Lightweight and easy to put on and take off, it makes a striking impression for any occasion. Secured by an attractive adjustable titanium coloured chain."
Gail's fantastic jewellery has been showcased in many shows here in Leeds including Alchemy 8 in 2007, Colour and Gems in 2009, Here Comes the Sun in 2013 and Seeing Colour in 2016. Gail takes inspiration from many different sources; from nature, ethnic traditions, the ideas of various artists and artistic movements, modern architecture and the wallpaper and textile designs of the 1950’s. She finds acrylic the most fascinating and versatile of 3-D media; it combines deep transparency and intense clarity with the most surprising reflectivity from internal surfaces. It is capable of capturing light and colour and form and reflecting it back in myriad ways. “I love art and I am most excited by making interesting yet practical jewellery designs that people enjoy wearing and bring them compliments. I use a variety of techniques including cutting, heating, and moulding block, sheet and compounds to produce my shapes, while other pieces are cast, laser-cut or moulded. I have developed my own processes to decorate it. It can be coloured or clear, patterned or plain, smooth or textured, sculpted or engraved, matt or polished, in almost any combination to reflect mood.” Gail is constantly experimenting and this material facilitates endless creativity through varying shape, colour, texture and decoration. “I don’t just love it for its impact and visual complexity but because of the many different ways it can be adapted to be worn as jewellery, both as adornment and as art.”
“Congratulations to Leeds Craft Centre on 40 years of excellence in bringing the best of British Craft to the general public. You are a wonderful asset for the Art Gallery and the City of Leeds and also for craft makers all over the country. I started working with the gallery in the 80s after leaving the RCA and I look forward to many more years of collaborating with you and your exciting exhibitions.”
Adele Taylor - as seen In the Spotlight
"I was working with the idea of landscape lines and textures after a holiday and some visual research trips to Iceland and Sweden. I found an old wooden spoon on a beach which sparked the idea to combine spoons with landscapes. The spoon is made from silver plated base metal with a chased landscape and oxidised finish. It sits in its own little drawn landscape environment, making it the perfect little keepsake for this special anniversary show."
Adele is a maker we’ve had the pleasure of working with in many shows including Up Front and In the Spotlight in 2010, Rings in 2013, The Jewellery Shows in 2014 and 2017 (when we celebrated 35 years), and more recently our Playful Jewellery Show in 2020. Adele will be showcasing her stunning jewellery and small keepsake items with us this anniversary year. She values practical hand making skills in the creation of her designs and enjoys letting the material influence and, to some extent, dictate how the pieces of work evolve during production. She became increasingly interested in pattern and texture as a result of a trip to Iceland where she found the linear texture and patterns in the vastness of the dramatic volcanic landscape very inspiring and much of her work since then has been expanding and exploring landscape ideas. The Icelandic colour pallete also suited her well as she was drawn to the muted colours and was struck by the similarity of these colours to the subtle and gentle colours which occur in metals and precious stones. Also, as part of Adele’s recent exploration of landscape, she has been developing a series of pieces which are a combination of 2D mixed media work created to include small pieces of 3D precious metal jewellery work which occupy their own places in the landscape. She works from her studio in Sheffield and also teaches small groups practical.
Pamela Dickinson - as seen in The Jewellery Show
Conversations No 4 - Necklace with Matching Mis-matched earrings.
"This special necklace and earrings are one of a series of unique pieces entitled 'Conversations.' That is not because it wants to be talked about, although that’s fine too. It is because of two reasons:
1. Unlike many of the pieces I make as I work alone in my workshop, all these pieces have come about as the result of collaborations of different sorts with other people, so they would not have existed without the input from those interactions.
2. Although there is a consistent movement, or sense of direction, flowing through these pieces, they are composed of two different elements - the solid parts and the more open linked parts - almost as though they are taking it in turns to form the whole piece, (and occasionally to sparkle).
The sequence of pieces in the series so far is as follows;
Conversations No 1 was a Silver necklace privately commissioned through Pyramid Gallery for somebody who had been left a specific amount of money to spend from a person dear to them. This piece was the first to incorporate the more open linked sections between more solid links, and it was the first time I made the swirly knotted shapes.
Conversations No 2 was again privately commissioned through a gallery, and another silver necklace, but this time incorporating gold and diamonds, some of which were reused from her Mother’s engagement ring. I was pleased to see how enlivening the small facetted stones amongst the gold beads were at the front of the necklace.
Conversations No 3 was a silver and gold bracelet for a private collector. Initially I said I was not able to make anything just then, having suffered a huge personal loss myself, but when I understood it was to be a gift for someone who was also grieving I was glad to be able to make it. The technical challenge with that piece was to weight the links so that the most delicate and considered sections were the most visible.
Conversations No 4 is this one! I was delighted to be asked to make a special piece for the Craft Centre and Design Gallery to be part of this 40th anniversary exhibition. I have taken the opportunity to enrich the design with an extra sparkle of blue colour, incorporating a mixture of sapphires among the granulation that forms the focal point at the front, with the intention that the variation in the intensity of the hue will add to the liveliness of the effect.
Among other details the earrings which match the necklace, but not each other, are a new, (and slightly cheeky), development.
Conversations No 5 is already under way and is to be a bracelet entirely in Gold."
Pamela started working with us back in 1987 and in 1993 showcased her rings in our exhibition of Rings. Since then we've showcased her jewellery in a show called Jewellery 9 in 1995, Jewellery 10 in 1996 and another exhibition of Rings in 2011. We can't wait to work with her again and celebrate her beautiful jewellery once more. Since her student days in 1968, Pamela has been accumulating skills and developing ideas to create a distinctive range of jewellery and silverware. In the early days she employed assistants and her work was sold through Liberty's, Aspreys & Boodles, as well as leading galleries, but now she prefers to work alone, making each piece herself in order to allow greater opportunity for creativity. Pamela specialises in lapidary, granulation, model making and carving but they are all subsidiary to the main aim of communicating through creating objects using original ideas and fine workmanship.
“I have enjoyed looking back through my invoice books and seeing so many entries for The Craft Centre and Design Gallery over the years. They bring back a lot of happy memories, with different times of my life associated with designs that were experiments made over shorter periods, alongside other designs that I have never tired of, and that I have made consistently throughout my working life. There is the first entry on 19th June 1987. I had forgotten that it included a silver spoon. For the Christmas exhibition of 1990 I particularly remember a collection of necklaces that I made including stones with iridescent or unusual qualities; sunstone, covellite, silver in its matrix, and more, that I had cut to set into softly triangular shapes. Time and ideas move on, and it is as interesting to remember them as it is to look back at photos of my younger self. It allows for an objective view never available at the current time, and gives me the satisfaction of knowing I have been fortunate to have such experiences, and the support to earn my living in such a rewarding way. I am looking forward to sending you a range of work to reflect designs from over all those years, from the earliest designs that formed the core of my business to some of my newest pieces, and to be part of such an exciting exhibition.”
PLEASE NOTE VOTING HAS NOW CLOSED!