It's Degree Show Time Again!

Come one come all, if you're in Dundee it's free!

My work will be at the Dalhousie building as of Friday! But Assessments tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed!

Good Luck to all the Masters students! x

The Thirtiest Year...

And a very very special piece for me which had taken a little bit of my time away from my research...

A new wedding ring designed for my mum. My dad commissioned me to make a new wedding band for my mum for their 30th Wedding Anniversary today, so this is what I made.

Traditionally the 30th wedding anniversary's gem of choice is a pearl. My mum's not keen on cultured pearls and I have to admit I'm not either, so I was very happy to find out that the modern equivelant has become diamond jewellery...though the modern equivelant for most anniversary stones has become diamond therefore rendering the diamond wedding anniverary a bit of a let down.

Anyway, the band is made of 1.5 mm Stirling silver, 18 carat gold and a diamond which I forget the specifications for...but it was more or less colourless, had few inclusions (flaws) and was the first diamond I've ever bought or set. So I'm really chuffed with the outcome and the fact that not only does my mum love it, but it fits perfectly...and I never got to size it properly!

Strangled by Words

Made of laser cut suede, these scarves come in black, grey & white, upper case, lowercase and numerical and could be a good way to made distortions into something tangible.

Designed by The Little Factory.com

(I want one!)

Fashionable Fads?

So in my desire to make anything resembling jewellery I took the results from my Fashion Fads questionnaire and made them into a necklace. This is actually a mock-up because the photos I took of it did not turn out very well. Which was a shame, but my photoshopping skills aren't too bad so I'm actually really happy with this picture.

The idea was that they would go in order of popularity and repeated mention, except I dropped them all and wanted to go to my bed, so in the end it was just what went together. Once I get some more results I'll redo the necklace in another form - this year I seem to be all about the iteration and reiteration.

Anyway so for the trends showed:

- bracelets

- bright colours

- multiples & layers

- alternative meaning (friendship, causes & karma)

- alternative fastenings (eg: magnets)

...nothing I couldn't have already told you, but it's reassuring that I'm not completely out of touch and indeed scary at the number of trends I remember and actually participated in.

The shame!

Sound Advice...

I came across this project today called The Sound Advice Project, which is a project which attempts to deter teenagers from drug use through the use of jewellery.

By recording an anti drug use message or any positive affirmation or frequently reiterated statement, a sound wave is created and then translated into a three dimensional form using varying sizes of beads. This allows the parents to give their child a message which they can keep with them without it being blazoned across their chests. The parents gains piece of mind and the child gets an interesting piece of jewellery which actually means something to them.

Designed by David Bizer, while there is no high tech software or sound within the piece itself, the ideas of using sound waves is actually quite intriguing to me, especially as the one visualisation I would always use on Media Player (before the dawn of iTunes) was the simple sound wave. It's simple, it's personal, but it's not overtly preaching or nagging.

For example, a few years ago my parents bought me a simple little bracelet with a strip of silver stamped with the word 'create' suspended on an orange chord. It was their way of giving me a quiet nudge of encouragement when I was in a period of 'designers block' and was particularly low. Needless to say, I've replaced the chord time and again, but whenever I'm really needing a little bit of encouragement I put on my bracelet and it helps.

Pressures of Memory...

"...investingating where one surface ends and another begins, the bloom of adornment, and how shifting exteriors reveal as they conceal." - Ariana Page Russell

I am in love with this image by Ariana Page Russell. It reminds me of all those scrawled messages that are written onto your hands so you don't forget them. But before you have a chance to remember they're even there, they've been washed off or smudged beyond recognition. Plus, whenever there's a not on your hand there's always someone who comments on how bad it is for your health, but there never stops us, within hours we've forgotten that warning and scrawled something new on our hands. But when I saw this picture I thought of it as all those messages making a permanent impression on the skin of all those things you've forgotten..."a body becomes an index of passing time."

It would be handy given my poor short term memory.

How do I look?

I've decided to try and get anyone who comes into my space to try on the glasses I've made and let me take a photo. Why? Well, look how different everyones style is. 

A'N'D

These are possibly the silliest and weirdest design for eye wear I've seen over the entire length of my product research this year.

Designed by Azumi & David (A'N'D), fashion graduates from Central Saint Martins, the couple have designed an extensive range of packing tape 'things to wear' (preferring this term to fashion accessories) including watches, bracelets, belts, ties and the above glasses. The proviso with these products being that you avoid direct contact with the skin. 

A funny little twist, but who's never put pieces of sellotape on their skin over the years just to see the pattern that comes off your skin or to torture a sibling? 

Among their other designs they sell necklaces which stamp watches and repetitive jewellery patterns on the skin, which is reminiscent of Tiffany Parbs 'Rash Stamps' and necklaces which use enlarged clasps as the focal point, in a similar styles as jewellery Laura Potter, who uses enlarged catches and earring backs (butterflies) to create her contemporary jewellery.

Despite their proviso and the serious doubt that these products actually give any sun protection in the slightest, I actually really love the concept of a lot of their designs. I admit to not liking a lot of conceptual jewellery, I'm really quite traditional - or possibly just overly safe - however, A'N'D's quirky style has actually begun to grow on me and the more I look into their other designs, the more I think this sort of product could fit into the consumerist, throw-away culture that exists.

Stick on...peel of...throw away...or...print on...wash off...

http://www.azumianddavid.com/

Personalised Jewellery

Rolf Sachs’ Strip Bracelet

This piece is presented as a strip of sheet silver, the hallmark its only distinguishing feature. Initially it seems unclear how the piece could be considered jewellery. However Sachs’ sensitive consideration of the owner’s personal identity allows a transformation from a simple strip of metal into a bracelet based on the individuals connection to and manipulation of the silver. Sachs completes the transition from jewel to jewellery by allowing the owner to have a hand in its formation, thereby creating a relationship and a history which is individual to each edition of the piece.

...............................

I recently wrote this as part of a critical review I submitted for part of my coursework. The review itself was on a jewellery design book called New Directions in Jewellery II, which I love, but argued about the concept of jewellery-to-be in the context of the book. Jewellery-to-be being a concept of designer Lin Cheung, that jewellery is merely an object unless it is worn. This is a concept I actually agree with to a degree. 

However, I've been thinking about Sachs' Bracelet since I got up this morning. If anything this is exactly the idea I'm trying to get into my project when I am working with my participants. To gain a relationship with a piece of jewellery or any wearable product, the user must take some role in its creation even on the most minuet of levels. It is also a good example of what I need to mention next week also. So possibly that's why it's playing on my mind.

Incidentally I got a very good mark for my essay, so I'm glad I argued in it rather than being overly agreeing with the concept. 

Design Methodology

I've always hated starting sketch books. Often it's like having my teeth pulled. I don't know exactly what it is about those first blank pages of a sketch book which just makes me stare at it and wonder what exactly I'm planning on going to put down.

Don't ask me why, but make me fold and origami water balloon and off I go. They're just not scary. So. Rather than a pile of sketch books, I've got a pile of inflated paper balloons. 

I think most people would think I'm odd, but one of my tutors loves them and if it gets all my ideas out and off of the backs of envelopes and post-it notes, then why not?

Aren't you glad there's no such thing as mind control...

These are the glasses I've been designing...fetching no? Although to be fair Jumi and Sun* both look far too cool in them. They're made of laser cut cardboard and are supposed to make people feel a little silly and instead Sun*, Jumi and my sister have all requested pairs!

The glasses are part of my cultural probe which I should get back this week as my participants have had their three weeks to work on them and I'm hoping that they will have gained me the information I've been looking for. They're supposed to create a conversation between me and my participants- the importance of appearance, image and how glasses with coloured lenses for the treatement of visual stress disorders intrupts the flow and stops people wanting to wear them. Or that's the theory.

Anyway, I love this photo of Jumi and I thought I'd share it. She looks like an evil genius!

Floral Jacks

I've been experimenting with these little flowers for a few years now, I keep making them and not knowing what to make from them. I've left them empty, put silver leaf on them and filled them with silicone and now I've started with resin. But I'm still clueless about what to do with them!

The first thing my family said when I popped the resin ones out of their acetates was that they looked like Jacks - the game where you scatter them on the floor, bounce a bouncy ball and pick them up between bounces. Given my game theme last year I'm considering giving it a whirl.

However, I prototyped these to see if the printed colour would come off onto the resin successfully, it did, though not as successfully as I hoped as as soon as they get wet the ink runs. If I use this technique I'll have to coat the ink side of the resin with another layer of resin, just to seal it.

The reason I'm doing this is because - apparently - coloured acetates can also be printed.

Sarah O'Hana Lasered Titanium

Sarah O’Hana came to do a lecture at DoJ a week or two before the Christmas break, a lecture I missed because of snow (the day I was also in a complete panic about the submission of my research poster) but I really wish I’d gotten to go.

O’Hana is a jewellery designer whose work is based on using laser to heat titanium and because of the way it oxidises the metal creates a myriad of colours in incredible detail. Now in third year a lecturer visited the jewellery department of DoJ and gave us a class in how to create anodised titanium effects using a electrolyte solution and also a micro torch (image 2). My most profound memory of this day was the nib of the micro torch exploding more than once and making us all jump a foot in the air. For future reference when using a micro torch don’t forget to make sure it has enough gas and that you don’t burn yourself with it...the flame’s so hot it’ll burn to the bone pretty swiftly. That’s one of the reason’s it’s so good for colouring titanium, the hotter or cooler the temperature and the longer the contact the difference in colour, the same in solution, the stronger or weaker the electric current running through the electrolytes the different the colour effect.

Titanium however is also a really hard metal, which is one of the properties that make it popular, my test pieces never really turned into anything, but the idea of the day was just to learn a new technique. O’Hana’s approach of using a laser cutter should theoretically remove the problem of gaining the right heat to produce the right colours. Because the laser can be set to a specific strength for each colour you’re able to plot exact patterns in the metal and know that when you hit ‘print’ it’ll be reproduced as long as you’ve got them written down correctly.

I’ve never really got much colour into my jewellery, I don’t use a lot of stone, the resins I use most are black and white and I don’t use enamel that often, however it’s something I love. When I used to paint at college my figures were Technicolor, I painted all the colours I saw...not particularly naturalistic, but I just loved using every colour available. However, since becoming a jeweller, the colour’s kind of faded out of my art, I want a bit more colour this year so I’d like to look into this a bit further and maybe experiment a little without blowing up the laser cutter!

(O'Hana, S. (2007) Walking with Scientists: a dialogue in jewellery. Manchester: Ars Ornata Europeana
BBC (2007) BBC News: Engineering Beauty [online] http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2007/07/03/020707_laser_jewellery_feature.shtml [Accessed: Dec 16 2008])

Fidget...

Silver Bracelet with 9ct Gold Fidgets

Now, this was for my granny Betty. My dad wanted to give her something special and she's been threatening to steal my poetry bracelet since she first saw it, so I designed something brand new for her based on it.

If you knew my gran you'd know how obsessed she is with bracelets. She has them wrist to elbow some days and you can always hear her before you see her. The funniest part of making this was actually sizing it. Gran may where bracelets all the time, but if I asked to borrow one she'd have been suspicious. So dad and mum tricked her into trying on mine and then giving me an excuse to get out my bracelet sizer...the bracelet is tinier than all her others, but is still a little big.

These are both easy and a complete bugger to size! I want to make a series of things based on this now, I just need the time and the money to buy the materials.

Brand Me

Branding...okay, so in my head, after two years of researching body modificiation, my head immediately went to the practice of physical branding onto the skin using a hot wire. I joked with Kate that maybe we should take it literally as jewellers and create our own brands and imprint something into our skin. I was joking, I'd be too much of a wimp, Kate however - who is really into body modification, tattooing etc - says she's always fancied doing it.

Anyway we have to do a presentation about 'Brand Me' and rather than premanetly scaring my body to do a we bit of joke for my PowerPoint, instead I went for the pen and ink tattoo option. I don't think I really need Emily stamped on my wrist until I start loosing my mind, so give me until the end of my Masters. I wanted for this to be a little tongue in cheek because I have been struggling with this project a little I think I've now gotten into it a little more and realised it's more personal and not literally branding in the form of logos, hot wires & hallmarks. That has actually dissapointed me, as I've been trying to get one made & have yet had the insentive to part with the money given I'm not currently making. I have however finally downloaded the forms and half decided on the design. Which is a step forward.

I may use this as my reading week postcard (#6) but I haven't decided yet.

A Room of Ones Own...

This is my postcard for week three, it's supposed to show how I feel this week has gone and what I have learnt...

...I've learnt I miss making. I miss my tool box and my workroom and just making things. So I took a photo of my toolbox trapped in the room at the back of the masters studio.

It has been a genuinely interesting week, we had a lecture on Wicked Problems and the Process's we use in order to create designs. We critically assessed a piece of work at an exhibition - which is not as much fun as you'd imagine - and I had my first day as Designer in Residence within the jewellery and metalwork department at DoJ.

It was great, I actually feel like I may have helped some of the girls in the class with the issues they have with their designs (mostly created by the conflict between tutors opinions which had confused them). Plus some of them talked to me about their experiences with dyslexia and my chosen area of research. So I have two willing interviewee's already, which is brilliant as one has only recently been diagnosed and the other has a long standing history with the condition and uses the coloured lenses. I'm really excited to be working with them all, it's nice to feel helpful again. I've really missed helping them out since leaving uni the first time.

The Problem...

When it comes to deciding on a subject to research for my Masters, I had to think about what was important to me. Obviously jewellery had to play a part in it, otherwise why did I study it for three years for? The other (given that I would like to go into teaching) was dyslexia. I've been mildly dyslexic all my life and I have also been exposed to a lot of information about it since I was a kid thanks to my dad being an optician. It's kind of a family thing as well. What I find interesting however in relation to teaching is that it's become a label. Children are dyslexic at the drop of a hat these days, and it is a very important issue to address and in my experience at art school there is a huge number of dyslexics. Knowing that so many people, even in just the jewellery department, were dyslexic made my decision easier as understanding it would help me understand them (& myself) a little better.

In relation to design it's even simpler to realise the downfalls in what is actually a very affective method of helping dyslexics. Colourimetry is the use of coloured lenses or overlays in order to make reading easier. Think about it. How often do you look at a bright white page with black lettering and your head goes a little fuzzy? Or twinkly in my case. By using coloured overlays it helps to relax the eyes and aid reading - however it has aprox and 80% failure rate as children just don't use them.

A proved aid is being ignored because overlays are cumbersome and glasses hold a certain stigma - in particular at a young age - so is there an easier way?

Let's see over the year!

Strathearn Gallery...

Yesterday I took all my wears, my chess & draught sets and gave them to the Strathearn Gallery in Crieff, it's been forever since I went there, but it's a lovely space and this will be my first official exhibition outwith of university - scary, but good.

Strathern Gallery, Crieff, Graduates 2008

4th Oct- 8th Nov 2008