Not a new home for me but for my blog. I have loved this old WordPress blog but it’s time to move on and embed the blog in my website. This should make it easier for me to keep it up to date and easier for you to keep tabs on what I’m up to. It’s a little sad to feel I’m abandoning all the memories on here but onwards and upwards and I hope I will see you there….
xxxx
Almost a year since my last post? How has that happened? And a year since the one before that. I blame these little people.
And I kind of blame these people too.
In September I started studying for an MA in Contemporary Craft. I’m looking at my own family and letting them inspire some new work.
There has been a lot of reading, a lot of research and a lot of time in the library. It’s been a steep learning curve and getting back into education has been much harder than I expected. Who knew it would be to tricky to balance, kids, business and higher education?
The first research module is done now and I am finally getting to play with new ideas and lots of exciting new tool and equipment. Lots to talk about here and lots to do – I just hope I’ll have time to do it this year.
After having a, quite frankly, wonderful year away from the jewellery bench doing this
it is time to get back to reality and back to work. I have done a few practice craft fairs and some new collections and designs are starting to develop. It is lovely to be back in my sunny little studio and to be making again. I am shocked to see this is my first blog post in over a year – the time has just flown by but I am ready to start making again.
The website has been completely revamped and is now well worth a visit, and I’m planning a workshop day in September . The bigger and more terrifying news is that in the Autumn I will be starting on a two year Masters in Contemporary Craft at Nottingham Trent. I am so excited to step back a little and explore my work and my creativity and so although I will be doing fewer fairs and exhibitions over the next couple of years there will be lots of gorgeous new work being made. I will still be accepting commissions and orders through the website – so please do get in touch if you don’t see me out and about in my usual haunts. But for now it is time to get organised – mother, maker and now student, I think I am going to be pretty busy from now on.
This calls for new stationary.
I spent my Saturday doing the most amazing, intense, enjoyable, inspiring and exhausting day of work I think I have ever done. Speedcraft.
Organised by Debbie Bryan Studio & Shop, sixty excited crafters arrived at midday for 3 hours of crafting delights. Split into 6 half hour sessions, they did everything from jewellery making to paper craft to gelatine printing and by all accounts had a fabulous day. From a tutors point of view it was fast, furious and I think it was fun – it went by so quickly it’s hard to be sure. 60 wonderful necklaces were made in my sessions and in total a fantastic 360 creative projects were completed in the day with 5 other amazing tutors – Judith Brown, Stevie Davies, Nikki Dennet, Katie Almond and Phiona Richards. There will be another speedcraft event sometime later in the year – join the mailing list for Debbie Bryan Studio & Shop to keep updated and if I have recovered by then I might just see you there. xx
The tools of the trade.
The first group of ten getting stuck in
The lovely craft room was at The Galleries Of Justice in the Lace Market, Nottingham. With 6 different craft session going on at once it was a noisy day (particularly with all the hammering)
The recycled charm necklace we made
So,the opening night was on Friday and the exhibition will run until June. Here is a small selection of images of some of our final collaborative works. Of course it would be much nicer to see them in person here and you will also see collaborative works from a host of other exceptional artists and makers. The exhibition is fascinating and well worth a visit.
A little set of beads and brooches
small pin cushion
fabric brooch with enamelled button
copper box pendant with needle lace
large pin cushion
long dyed silk necklace with stitching and copper beads
non-functional piece – printed and stamped copper with enamelled button and needle lace
tiny pincushion
long mixed media neck piece
the collection
All photos courtesy of Ruth Singer.
I have to confess to feeling slightly lost once we had finished off the last pieces for Synchronise. I had a final morning creating with Ruth and we stitched on the last of the brooch pins and pinned on the last few enamelled buttons.
It has been so refreshing to work outside of my normal boundaries, although I do love my day to day making this project has really reminded me that there is more to my creativity and I aim to carry on delving into that.
And it’s not over – we are planning to continue working together and building on this project, including some more site specific work from other locations and some scavenging for fund objects to include. We will also be running a workshop in July at Ruth’s Leicester studio and I am really looking forward to seeing what other people do with the techniques and combinations we have only just begun exploring.
The third stage of my collaborative work with Ruth was to get into the studio and start making some samples and trying things out. As we are both short on time and live some distance apart (she is based here in Leicester) we decided we would each keep to our own discipline and work within that to try out new techniques and more experimental work. Although we both had a little play in each others studios our limited time together meant that we wanted to focus on the ideas of the collection and not so much on the skill sharing – maybe we’ll do that more next time.
We experimented a little bit with using found objects in the pieces but both felt as we were drawing on inspiration from Calke Abbey it felt inauthentic to incorporate pieces which them selves had no link to Calke.
One the things I loved at Calke was how all the marks of the life and decay of the object had been meticulously preserved. In my metal work I decided to retain all the firestain and solder marks to give a this beautiful patinated finish. In the same way we decided that leaving thread ends show and leave things unfinished really connected to what had both drawn us to that place.
I also developed this type of simpler and more delicate brooch clasp to make some of the piece wearable – something I have since brought into my other work
Alongside using some imagery from photos we took on our visit Ruth used natural dying methods like rust, coffee and even beetroot to replicate some of the lovely colours and texture we found there.
Ruth worked on some stunning stitched samples like this one – trapping images, buttons and different printed and dyed fabric to create these rich and layered pieces. By sharing our images of what we were working on individually we found inspiration and new ideas came really easily and working together fed our own creative processes.
From creating these and other samples and experiments we both had a very clear idea of what we wanted the collection to be but no real fixed plan for any of the final pieces. This leads up to what was the most exciting part of the project – distilling all our inspiration, ideas and experiments into a collection of work to really describe the creative process we had started.
The Synchronise exhibition opens this weekend (Saturday 9th March) and runs until 2nd June at the National Craft and Design Centre in Lincolnshire. It features not only mine and Ruth’s work but eighteen other makers as well, collaborating on a varied selection of projects and products. I’m off to the opening tomorrow night so will finish up this series with images from the exhibition and of course of the finished pieces.
The Synchronise exhibition for which I am working on this new collaborative collection opens in a few weeks (9th March) so as work on the project begins its last stage I wanted to continue explaining how it all has come together. I’m working with textile talent Ruth Singer to combine our fabric and metal work expertise.
Once the initial site visit was made we both went back to our respective studios for a good think. I don’t always do a huge amount of sketchbook work for every collection but for more conceptual work like this or when I have a hundred ideas swelling around my head I find it really useful to get my thoughts down in the real world. Here are a few of my scribbles to show you how the project evolved…
The colours of calke. With so much of my work being found objects I don’t always get a lot of choice on colour. One of things which struck me most on our visit was the beautiful faded colours; dust, dirt, rust and decay in lovely muted tones.
A little collage of some of the photos I took during the visit. The abbey has a wonderful sense of layered history stretching right up to the present day when the conservations teams aim to preserve the remains of Calke without restoring them.
Calke has a really interesting family history and I was really taken with the stories of the eccentricities threaded through the hereditary lines. There is sense of solitude, isolation and shyness that I wouldn’t normally associate with such wealth and privilage. One of the things I love about Calk is the sense of loss and displacement. Of things which were once there and are now missing. Unfulfilled potential and a family home with out a family.
Looking into combing metal and fabric textural pieces
Using sections of images as texture and pattern to make linear pieces.
Creating metal frames and boxes to hold tiny fragments of Ruth’s embellished fabric.
The joy of this project is that although I have my own take on what Calke inspired, working with another artist means our project will be so much more than just my ideas. I’ll start to look at some experimental pieces in the next post and also introduce some of the pieces and ideas Ruth has been working on. You can keep up with our progress by following our Pinterest board too, you can also go back and look at my introduction to the project here.
After a long (and much needed) Christmas break I am finally easing back into life in the workshop. This week I am picking up a project that I started in December and has been bubbling through my brain ever since.
I’m taking part in an exhibition called Synchronise at The National Centre For Craft and Design. The exhibition pairs up members of The Design Factory from different craft disciplines to work on collaborative craft projects. I’m thrilled to be working with a terrific textile artist – Ruth Singer.
“Ruth Singer creates one-off textile artworks and products using sustainable and recycled materials inspired by historical textiles, museum objects, personal heritage, memories and stories. Ruth uses hand-stitched construction techniques such as pleating, gathering, appliqué and structured stuffing to create complex surface texture.”
Have a look at her website to find out more about Ruth and what she does.
Although our working materials and styles are quite different our mutual interest in historical objects, vintage ephemera, collections and all things discarded and decayed gave us a solid grounding to start the project. To help us reach inspiration and spark off our project we took a trip to the amazing Calke Abbey in Derbyshire. A stately home gifted to the National Trust in state of disrepair and decay it has been maintained in it’s ramshackle state and in places is one of the loveliest places I’ve ever been.
To start this little series of post on the project here are some of the images I took on our initial visit and which have provided the inspiration for our collaboration.
If you want to follow more on the development of this project I will continue posting as we work through it – you can also see our joint pinterest board on the collaboration – a place where we share images and ideas together. Enjoy.
I am very difficult to buy for. I will admit it. Like many of you, I suspect, I am quite particular when it comes to presents. I know what I like and I know what I don’t and sometimes its very hard to pin down exactly what the difference is between the two. Coming up to my 7th Christmas selling season I am finally putting into action an idea I had about 5 years ago.
This year, for the very first time, you will be able to make use of my bespoke Christmas wishlist. And it works like this. When you see me at a craft fair and spot a little something that takes your fancy you can take a complementary ‘suggestion card’. On it you note down which particular piece has caught your eye and you also leave a note with me with any other details on – size, colour, text etc. You then slip the note card into your gift givers pocket, wallet, breakfast cereal or just hand it straight over, hopefully ensuring you get what you really want for Christmas and not the afore mentioned well meaning but misjudged set of kitchen spoons (and an uncomfortable silence around the birthday breakfast table). If you are browsing online there is a wishlist contact page here which works in a similar way.
On a more serious note – every Christmas I am bowled over by the focus given to giving and it really is so heart warming. Most of the ladies I speak to – and yes, it is usually ladies who do most of the Christmas present shopping – are so focussed on the task at hand that even when they see something they adore they put it back with a sigh and return to the present list. So I am hoping this is a way for them to ensure that their generosity is rewarded and to remove the anxiety of gift buying from their significant others – partners, parents, sibling, children… and I know that here, at Power Towers, a well placed December email with links to relevant online gifts, annotated with size and colour preferences always makes the pre-Christmas mania just that little bit less fraught and results in smiles all round on Christmas morning.
There is nothing that makes me happier on a drizzly Sunday morning than a potter around a car-boot sale. I still occasionally pick up little bits and bobs for jewellery but as my business grows I am increasing having to find new ways to acquire enough materials (and that’s a whole other blog post) and so my attention turns to all the other hidden gems lurking on the pasting tables and picnic rugs.
Last Sunday I came across this and knew it was just waiting for me.
This little red diary from 1956 encapsulates everything I find so seductive about the vintage curios and forgotten objects I build my work from. For me this truly is treasure.
It’s nothing special. In 1956 it would have been so ordinary to have been almost un-noticeable. This tiny little book holds fragments of a life lived 56 years ago. Day to day comings and goings of Mrs V. Murphy and to me it’s simply fascinating. There is no note in it of major, dramatic or life changing moments. The entries are so much more than that.
They are a little glimpse into someone’s life, personal, intimate but very domestic and every day. That is the essence of what inspires me and my work. Reflecting that intimate – and often unnoticed – connection people make with objects; watches, jewellery, coins, and keys. These items represent lives lived, memories and a nostalgia and feeling of familiarity and comfort for times I don’t remember.
from inside the workshop 