Two Brooches: Oxidised silver, 18ct gold, mother of pearl.

This work began as an exploration of material hierarchies and in particular the concept of ‘Meaning in Every Material’. Meaning in iron. Specifically iron jewellery. Through practice-based research and the production of jewellery & jewellery-scale artefacts my intention was to explore the processes used in Berlin Iron jewellery production and investigate whether these industrial and historic processes can be accessed by the crafts person and applied to one-off pieces in a contemporary context. Just as these methods of making were adapted from an architectural scale my continuing interest in ornament and particularly architectural ornament were useful parallels in the process.

The use of iron in jewellery included a study visit looking closely at Berlin Iron jewellery in the Glasgow Museum's collection. I looked also at architectural decorative ironwork in the V&A collection, specifically a panel that dates from 1700 from Cologne. The drawings of this piece also feature in a book of plates by William Griggs published by the then South Kensington Museum in 1898. I was interested in how the drawings of the works could be used as part of my process. I scanned the drawings and images, traced them to produce a CAD drawing which then allowed me to analyse the piece and translate it into a jewellery scale through 3D printing and casting into metal which would be otherwise unachievable in its delicacy in other making techniques.

Statement:

Ornament is not a crime. Ornament is a cultural language, visual indicator and aesthetic communicator. It tells us stories of the past.

The inherent motifs of decorative ironwork are removed from their original context but their translation into a jewellery scale echoes political, social and personal meanings and attachments that are associated with the use of iron in jewellery.

There is more to the addition of gold than its opposition to iron; hierarchies in materials, value and strength, process and virtuosity. Gold used to gild iron, to contrast its blackness. Gold locating points of detail in the ornament. A gold grid containing and controlling the decoration that seeks to undermine it.

My process nods to the long-standing industrial processes of casting iron and uses modern technologies alongside traditional hand skills to translate historic artefacts into contemporary wearables.