Quintessence
Just a few textures made from melting silver into nickel.
In my tumblr's description I say it's about ‘the beauty in subtlety and the wonder in greatness’, but I think I prefer the subtle part. It's always the organic accidents that product the most enchanting, unique detail.
Freelance Whales - Follow Through
A snippet of the beginnings of my first year project at London Met for Silversmithing & Jewellery Design BA.
Today we went to the Natural History Museum to gather source material, something I did for a project last year, and two things struck me about my development in the last 10 months - 1) I'm much more comfortable just drawing (even endless amounts of dino bones) without worrying what it'll turn out like, and usually it doesn't turn out too bad. 2) I've stopped narrowing down my focus on a project before I've even really begun.. I struggled a lot with that at CSM and I can truly say I've learned from those experiences.
In three years time maybe I'll be ready to launch my own jewellery collection? Or start an MA in Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery at the RCA? Or perhaps an Engineering Doctorate in Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation from the Bartlett? I should really stop researching this.. I could be doing anything.
Update: I've made a blog for my sketchbook
Oxidysed Pyramid Ring
During one restless night in Croatia I had an idea for a pyramid ring whose edges curl round to form the band, so I scribbled it in a notepad at 4am and went back to dozing. Discovering the sketch yesterday (on the back page of my graphite sketchbook no less) I decided to go ahead and make it.
This would be so simple to make in wax and then cast but I don't have access to any casting things and having made a pyramid before I know how difficult/rewarding it can be to make by hand with sheet metal. The mathematics involved in making the flat blueprint - documented here - are mindbending so I made a mockup in copper to check the measurements were correct. But then I messed up my last piece of thick silver so had to go with a thinner stock.
Since it has a thick band I wanted quite a punky finish, so firstly I brushed and lightly polished the piece and then oxidised it, then finally I buffed the edges for a worn effect. It looks great worn with the small onyx ring (top) or alone as a thumb ring.
Two Door Cinema Club - Undercover Martyn (acoustic)
Croatia 2012
I've just returned from an unimaginably awesome fortnight in Croatia, one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to. I traveled through Southern Dalmatia with a group of old school friends, the greatest thing about island hopping was the diversity of our surroundings - from tourist-happy Hvar and Dubrovnik to the national park in Mljet void of public transport (where we stayed in such a ghetto campsite and it may or may not have been run by a cult).
Unfortunately I managed to ruin my Holga and underwater cam... then found out the film I'd had waiting in my SLR for a month was b&w and that's yet to be developed. All digital for now, hopefully more photos to come. Update - fate's not in my favour, apparently I didn't manage to fix that glitch in my not-so-trusty Pentax :/
Geometry Daily
A triangle-based selection from the blog Geometry Daily.
About half the inspiration for my new tumblr Field Notebooks that catalogues my constant note-taking; there's something really beautiful about the imperfections made while recording and although the sketches above are all digital they're clearly more appealing than black on white (plus all the geometry constructs kicks ass).
Matt & Kim - Let's Go
Pentatope Jewellery
I'm happy to introduce you to my new jewellery collection 'Pentatope'
Remember that post about Schematics? Around that time I was chosing a topic for my final major project at college and one of my proposals was based on that book, the other was on Metamorphosis. In the end I chose Metamorphosis because I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do with it, much the safer choice.
Throughout the project I regretted not trying the more risky project and vowed to get back to it after college finished. And I did! Schematics was all about visualising difficult concepts with simple shapes and figures, a solemn communication hidden under lines and graphs. My small study developed into Pentatope, much more commercial and less conceptual than the original, but I've found that even creating a simple aesthetic takes vast sums of complexity.
I'm working on some pieces for my summer jewellery line which should go public in June on Etsy (no name for it yet, hopefully I'll figure that out some time today). These are just initial models but I'm becoming so attached to these ring stack designs..Update 20/5 - now titled 'Pentatope Jewellery' :)
A Weekend In Ediburgh
I had a whole wonderful roll of our coffee shop adventures and hike but my trusty Pentax let me down and exposed the bottom half of most of them :( anyhow it was a lovely getaway from my haphazard London lyfe to see my all-time favourite people.
Schematics: A Love Story
This may just be the most evocative, enigmatic books I've ever read, or perhaps explored is a better word. Julian Hibbard pairs geometric schematics with simple prose to form a beautiful narrative. Hibbard explains that the diagrams are found by googling words derived from the essence of the right-hand text, thus enhancing their meaning and relating abstract human concepts to equally confounding scientific ones. I'm terrible with words so I'll let David LaRocca further explain below but above are my favourites of the book, I'd truly recommend it to anyone. Buy it on Amazon here
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.We encounter in Schematics: A Love Story a portfolio of nebulous black and white diagrams alongside solemn poetic observations that subtly suggest a novel apprehension of the nature of transformation.
Schematics operate simultaneously and two distinctive registers: the deeply personal (a love story between if the narrator and the objects of his affection, desire, and confusion) and the profoundly anonymous (a love story within matter-subject of gravity, magnetism, genetics, mechanics, electricity, and this space time continuum). The first-person voice, though, should not necessarily be assumed to reveal the authorial confession; rather, consider how the voice is structurally and tonally autobiographical. The “self” it references is fluid, permeable, expansive. The prose, then , is not dissimilar to the drawings: they are lines in pursuit of the expression of form, activity, character, and position. Just as the diagrams chart ethereal, often invisible phenomena, so the narrator’s prose strains to articulate mysterious forces of the heart, head and hand. As the drawings made the indeterminate concrete, the narrator transforms a private sentiment into something sufficiently generic to be useful to all readers, an aid to our own reflections.
Drawn together, these two strands the personal and the anonymous – reveal how Schematics is primarily about the experience of attraction, repulsion, and resistance, and getting nearer to some objects while moving farther away from others. It is, in other words, a story of love – love as a force of nature – and the pursuit of knowledge.
excerpt from 'Out Of Nowhere' afterword by David LaRocca
Walk Off The Earth - Somebody That I Used To Know
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