A Sense of Jewellery brought together outstanding examples of modern jewellery by forty artists and designers made in Britain over the past forty years, at the Goldsmiths’ Centre in Clerkenwell, London, as part of the London Design Festival, the exhibition set out to rediscover British jewellery design and celebrate the quality of design thinking and material innovation which has emerged from independent studios in this period. Jewels are one of the most intimate and oldest forms of human expression, seen in the extraordinary objects held in museums and personal collections worldwide. This exhibition united pieces from the V&A, private patrons, artist collections and The Goldsmiths’ Company’s own collection to demonstrate how artists and designers continue to be drawn to this field of activity, inspired by its human and material histories.This unique combination of British works was been put together by invited guest curators: Amanda Game, a leading UK independent curator and producer in the field of jewellery and silversmithing and Liveryman of The Goldsmiths’ Company and Professor Dorothy Hogg MBE, influential designer and former Head of the School of Jewellery in Edinburgh. Major works by established artists such as Wendy Ramshaw CBE and Gerda Flockinger CBE will be shown alongside works by emerging makers from across the UK, such as Andrew Lamb and Zoe Arnold. “Andrew Lamb employs a laser-welder, alongside traditional tools. In his case, he uses it to help manipulate and fix wire on a microscopic scale. This approach, in the words of the exhibition curators, enables the creation of “jewellery with mesmerising optical effects that shift and change as pieces move with the wearer”.
His Lenticular changing colour ring (2015), commissioned for A Sense of Jewellery, is extraordinarily intricate. In the exhibition the presentation of this work employs technology of another type; following a collaborative project with Stef Lewandowski, of Makeshift, visitors are invited to put on Oculus Rift glasses, which enable a very close examination of Lenticular changing colour ring (2015). The view through the glasses is manipulated by a sensor, controlled by the wearer’s hand. This approach to displaying the work acknowledges and looks to overcome the potential frustration of a visitor, who would like to look more closely.