Looking Forward and Back

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Some of the photos I have of my older pieces - images that in particular have proved so well liked by the people who buy my work - this is after all how I make my living - that I feel that I want to continue with them.

I used to make only one painting per idea - I am about to increase that to two - one for earrings and one for pendants and brooches. I need more pendants to send with orders to galleries to make their displays even though it is always earrings that seem to out sell everything. Personally I prefer brooches but I know that I am in a minority. That is how I began - making literally a fragment of a painting to wear.

No two pieces of jewellery ever have an identical image as I build up many layers and by doing so leave traces only that emerge or are softened into the background again and again as I add more colours or more shades and hues of one colour. It is a delicate and prolonged process - often 30 layers on a painting + silver, copper and gold leaf - or foils - they work very differently.

This brooch was an interpretation of a blend of impressions - the shifting turquoises of the sea - I am in Capri - and the horizon, a memory of a ceramic bowl of snowdrops from my childhood that evoke different things to different people - as in the universal power of abstract impressionism.

For me I see the silver columns of ancient Roman pillars catching sunlight fleetingly or perhaps moonlight in the present moment and their imprint as soft shadows from the past.

Immediately my mind takes off into a world of imagination. The snowdrops are no longer flowers, they are travellers by sea - Phoenician traders, refugees...

It is also an air of Japanese prints - anyway I love it and I will do a series of re-creations from the past and see where that takes me.

Also some larger wall pieces.

paper mâché jewellery

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I run workshops in private houses around the country and from my own home in Devon from time to time. I also have an active YouTube Channel with many short tutorials and I will shortly be uploading video workshops that will give almost the same experience as my Half Day, One Day and Weekend Workshops. They will cover all of my many different types of papier mâché jewellery techniques.

making jewellery with air dried papier mache, hardening, gilding, scorching

making jewellery with air dried papier mache, hardening, gilding, scorching

making jewellery - papier mache, hardening, gilding, scorching

I have been making and selling my jewellery for over twenty five years, during which time it has been found, sought and collected, much to my delight, by people from around the world. It has been for sale in Craft Selected Galleries, Independent Galleries small and large, Museums and Art Galleries, at Liberty and at my Spitalfields Market stall in London, in Europe and Japan and at the Guggenheim Museum shop in New York. 

making papier mache bowls - textured pulp, painting, gilding, distressing, waxing

papier mache bowls - creased finish - metallic powders and wax

making papier mache platters with paper layers, gilding and distressing

decorating bowls with printed papers - gilding

quickly drying papier mache bowls via microwave - flour and water

making papier mache collars - to be gilded. Also rims for platters + bowls

papier mache gilded and painted bowl

I make necklaces, rings, brooches, pendants and earrings rings that may incorporate papier-mâché beads that resemble baroque pearls, opals, ancient clay, bone, metal or semi-precious stones. I am fascinated by fragments of all kinds and often include pieces of discarded clay pipes stems that I find on the foreshore of the River Thames at lowtide. They sometimes taken on the blue/grey colours of the clay and river silt that has washed over them for hundreds of years and through countless ebbing and flowing of many tides. Also I may add fragments of pottery, glass, plastic and numerous little seaworn treasures that are cast up along the shoreline. I look in antique and flea markets to find beautiful old necklaces that can be broken down and incorporated with my own work. I make impressions from found and natural objects - magnolia seed heads for example - then I cast impressions in papier-mâché clay and or epoxy resin, that are twisted and folded, dried or hardened with wood glue or resin, gilded with gold or silver, distressed or painted. Necklaces, bangles, earrings and brooches, bowls and platters - embellished or incised, painted and gilded, the list goes on.

making necklaces using pressed and folded air dried paper pulp, hardened and gilded

making flexible moulds using natural and found objects

moulded impressions of tiny flowers

mould with pressed fine white papier mache pulp

papier mache impressions of sycamore seeds to be made into necklace

impressed and folded papier mache beads, hardened, painted, gilded, varnished

different ways of finishing papier mache beads - these resembling faience 

making papier mache beads with flour and water

making beads with Tyvek paper and iridescent tissue - heated and compressed

making papier mache beads, discs - hardened & gilded with matt gilders paste

making various papier mache beads, impressed, hardened and gilded with gold leaf

making various papier mache beads, hardening and gilding

looking for inspiration - collecting photos, sketches, objects

collecting inspiration - for example distressed plastic discs from a timber yard

collecting inspiration - driftwood

painting techniques - acrylic inks, gilding, overlays, mixed media

My working methods are to travel and draw, paint, make notes, take lots of photographs and bring back paintings and ideas to work on in my studio, some of which I later develop into paintings, often abstract, from images that hold the key colours and associated ideas of the different places. Then I research, paint, write and make a unique kind of papier-mâché jewellery from fragments of my paintings. They are coated in a clear, hard epoxy resin, gloss or matte varnish.

making papier mache jewellery that resembles enamel

 

painted and gilded papier mache and resin pendant

painted and gilded papier mache and resin earrings

I also experiment by using a combination of things in some pieces - papier-mâché, mixed media, resin, wax and found objects, acrylic ink, gouache, watercolour, pencil, oil pastel, gold, silver and copper leaf, metal foil and powders, pigments, tissue and tracing paper plus interesting commercially produced paper and found paper, Italian sweet wrappers, metro tickets, unusual packaging etc.

Catching Up - June to August 2015

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June -  Capri.
July -  Move into new studio.
August - Working long days with plenty of space - bliss.

Whenever I'm in London I often go to The Chelsea Physic Garden. It is a hidden paradise, to rest, refresh, recuperate.

Well, my daughter and I did bring back a lot of plants from Chelsea needless to say. She has a very neglected area on the roof of her rented house just waiting to be turned into a lovely garden retreat.

Silver dishes by Gilbert Leigh Marks - one of the most remarkable exponents of floral silver chasing.
An aide-mémoire for papier-mâché, gesso and silver leaf.

 We arrive in Naples hell's kitchen and melting pot for refugees and migrants from everywhere.

 And take the ferry to Capri. My spiritual home.

 First stop as always is Buonocore for espresso and wild strawberry tartlet. Fuel for the journey.

Rest awhile in dappled sunlight.

 Time to buy fruit to take on our walk and our first adventure.