Looking Forward and Back

Tweet

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.

New Papier-Mâché Jewellery Website

Tweet

Wednesday 6th March - We have been working very hard - my lovely daughter has been busy building a new website for my papier-mâché jewellery.

our new website is here 

She has also been helping me to make the jewellery. It has been a wonderful time and I've hardly noticed the winter at all this year. Now the Spring is coming and new beginnings are on their way. We have great plans. She is heading back to London to work on a new film and work-wise the incredible connectivity of 

technology will enable us to continue to work together. 

The actual connectivity of the technology in the little wooden Summer House/Studio is a little iffy. Being on the very edge of the river can mean that it feels very much as if we are at sea in a storm on windy days. Also the wind blows the branches that can intermittently disrupt the internet. Though hey ho it's not really a problem. I like the fact that Mother Nature always has the last word. 

My son very generously moved all of my plants from my previous little courtyard garden to the river garden for which I am eternally grateful and now they are beginning to show new growth so soon the New Studio will be covered in Jasmine, Honeysuckle and Roses this summer.  The Agapanthus that we first found at Chelsea Flower Show and that spent three years on a roof garden in Camberwell has now found its natural home by the estuary. 

ONE DAY WORKSHOPS - MAY 2016

Tweet

ONE DAY WORKSHOPS IN TOPSHAM

papier-mâché jewellery - come along & make your own unique papier-mâché jewellery with the beads that you will make here. Bring your apron & a packed lunch, buy a picnic in town or eat in one of the many lovely cafes or pubs in Topsham.

10am - 4pm - you may arrive at 9.30 & leave up to 5pm if you wish.

Only 4 people per workshop in a friendly old Georgian house in Topsham

£75 per person – all materials (except pearls) & refreshments supplied.  

WORKSHOP 01

Papier-Mâché Made From Natural Forms 

We will make beads to make necklaces & earrings by making flexible moulds & impressions using papier-mâché - hand formed, painted & gilded - they look like ancient treasure. You can paint then any colour. Bring your own beads to add if you like.

Tues 3rd May + Wed 4th May + Thurs 5th May + Sat 7th May  

Sun 8^th May + Mon 9th May + Wed 11th May

WORKSHOP 02

‘Egyptian Faience’ Papier-Mâché Beads 

We will make beads to make necklaces & earrings by making flexible moulds & impressions using papier-mâché to resemble the faded matt turquoise & blue colours of old Egyptian faience. Bring your own beads to add if you like.

Fri 13th May + Sun 15th May + Tues 17th + Thurs 19th May + Sat 21st May 

Mon 23rd May

Hilary Bravo. Victoria House. 8 Victoria Road. Topsham. EX30EU

To discuss or book you can e-mail me at - hilarybravo2013@gmail.com

or phone or text me on - 07598 870152

visit my website - www.hilarybravo.wix.com/jewellery for more details.

paper mâché jewellery 2016

Tweet

I make paper mâché jewellery, although it looks more like enamel than paper mâché. It's lightweight and waterproof. My images and working methods are my own ideas and techniques that I have developed over the last 20+ years. I aim to bring the 18th century techniques of the masters of the art of English Papier Mâché into the 21st century using modern paints and resins.

                                                                                                                                                                                                          

December 2013

Tweet

November has been one of my busiest months in my new studio or any studio ever for that matter! But I seem to have lost my blog somewhere in draftworld ... Nevermind. I have been to Harry Potter at the Warner Brothers Studios at Leavesdon - maybe it was whisked away to a parallel world via Diagon Alley.
I have been listening to some very beautiful and I suppose rather old fashioned music by today's general standards, as I have worked in my studio into the night -
Richard Addinsell - The Isle of Apples
I love Richard Addinsell - here is a link for anyone who wishes to know more about this man and his life and work - Richard Addinsell link
No home of my own as yet but I am on the lookout. I also found some time at the end of last month to go to stay with my daughter in London for some mother/daughter time and to discover a bit more of my capital. I tend to regard London as my comfortable and sustaining mother city and other places - Paris, Venice etc as my favourite aunts and uncles - more unconventional and less predictable.
The National Portrait Gallery is providing me with a wealth of insight and inspiration, not only into the lives of others and into history in so many ways but also into my love of jewellery. There is a beautiful portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst that was painted in 1927 by Georgina Agnes Brackenbury.
I think that her brooch could be translated into papier-mâché very well. I have devised a series of pieces of jewellery based on those worn by iconic women. Emmeline Pankhurst gave me the idea. Now I am on the lookout for other pieces. Part of my research may well have to, most certainly will have to include visiting galleries to find original material.

 

The machinations of my Blogger world are beyond me sometimes - why does this picture refuse to rest happily where I place it? Why does it insist on being extra large and in the centre when I urged it into a modest left hand position? Perhaps because it is linked to Mrs Pankhurst.... After much experimenting I found that if I set the position and then copy/delete/paste where I want it to go it stayed there. This is quite a discovery after years of photos refusing my directions!

Back to the National Portrait Gallery and the bracelet worn by Jenny Lind.

 

Jenny Lind by Edward Magnus

Elizabeth Parcells in the style of Jenny Lind - known as the Swedish Nightingale. 

Frida  by Maira Kalman - the necklace.

Primavera
From right to left - Chastity, Beauty and Love.

   
I have been making some lapel pins - as a tribute to Coco Chanel who was aware of their charm a long time ago.

Mine are quite simple - made from papier mâché that I have gilded and scorched. The backs are smoothed over with Milliput

Then I have gilded them as the gold leaf adheres perfectly to newly applied Milliput as it is an epoxy paste. One of its official uses is to mend broken pottery and it dries to the hardness of ceramic so a perfect addition for strength and durability. It also thoroughly and firmly embeds the disc of the stick pin. The surface is brushed with either epoxy resin or matte acrylic varnish. The pins are about 3cm in diameter and 5cm in length. I shall be sending them out to galleries in the January and have put some for sale in  my Etsy Shop

The photographs are looking rather dismal - i-phone and light box + photo-shop should work better than this. The finished pieces are really quite white apart from beautiful and quite subtle variations in scorching with a soldering iron. 

Earlier this month I went to see an exhibition at the V&A on the history of pearls

You know how when one is at an exhibition one often finds oneself in a a sort of a ruck of a few people with whom one seems to effortlessly travel the prescribed exhibits whilst pretending not to notice each other. There must be a word for these companions ... in the absence of which "excoms" will do. Well my excoms for the duration were Gilbert and George as in Gilbert and George

Delightful and always immaculate and honed to perfection. I came away feeling rather disenchanted with wealth and the pearl industry and in particular the resemblance of latter day mass produced pearls to ball-bearings. 

I have some lovely irregular shaped pearls to add to some pieces to make necklaces that I think will work well. 

Keshi pearls 

Natural white keshi and bronze fresh-water pearls between fragments of 18th century clay pipe stems that I have found on the river bed of the Thames at low tide on one of my mud-larking forays, make a necklace, whilst picking out the shifts of colour and contrasting textures of one of my scorched and gilded papier-mâché pendants.

I have also made some smaller fragments with papier-mâché by pressing air dried papier-mâché clay into a mould that I made from an Edwardian serving spoon using Siligum - made by Pebeo

The photograph is pretty dreadful but you can see what I mean regarding the transferred image. The backs are again strengthened with Milliput and I have embedded a silver lined transparent glass bugle bead into so that the stainless steel wire can be threaded through. The backs are then  if you would like to see how I make them - gilded with silver leaf. I have grouped three keshi pearls between pairs of my iridescent papier-mâché beads - 

Below is one of my many YouTube video tutorials - this one explaining how to make the iridescent papier-mâché beads.