Lately I have been making a lot of work which relies for its effect on repetition of simple anticlastic shapes, namely pieces from my Ripple range - the triple pendants, studs, drop earrings and brooch. I love these designs and am proud of them. They are by no means easy to make (they involve a lot of very tricky soldering). But I was beginning to feel that I had strayed from the path a bit - this range doesn't really stretch me when it comes to anticlastic raising.
If you spend any amount of time at all on my website you will come across this term a lot. There are two videos you can watch which will demonstrate and/or explain the technique. I have loved it since before I knew it had a name. At college I was fascinated by forms which curved through two planes perpendicular to one another at the same time - a clunky way of expressing something ravishingly elegant. Unfortunately at that time (the late 80s) no-one around me knew how to produce them, and of course there was no internet to search. I had to content myself with approximating such forms using sheet steel, welded and cut with oxy-acetylene. Some of these pieces were very large, up to six feet in length.
I gradually drifted back towards silversmithing and in 2000 did a City & Guilds craft level course at what was then London Guildhall University (Sir John Cass School of Art), but again, nobody was able to guide me towards producing the forms I hankered for. It was only a chance discovery in the stack (rarely used book section) of the University of Brighton library which set me on the path. Form Emphasis for Metalsmiths by the celebrated Finnish silversmith Heikki Seppa gave me a name for the technique and the forms for the first time. It was a little light on actual how-to, but I started making my own formers out of reclaimed wood and making jewellery - all very large compared to the scale on which I now work!
In 2005 I did a one-week course led by American goldsmith Michael Good, a long-time collaborator of Seppa, where I learned how to "do it properly". Equipped with shiny new tools, I came back to Hove and started applying my new knowledge. Actual competence takes a bit longer (unfortunately!).
Ever since then I have been engaged in a process of learning and honing my skills. Which brings us full circle - lately I have felt that I wasn't exactly going backwards, but I had lost forward momentum - it had been a while since I really stretched myself technically. This coincided with being selected for the 2021 Digital Craft Festival. I felt this was an ideal opportunity. I already had an idea which I had been kicking around for a while, and this gave me the motivation to really get stuck in.
As I have said in a previous blog, I mainly design with a hammer in my hand. The imagery came from my old love of marine invertebrates (ah, those lost days spent drawing in the Natural History Museum...). I wanted something which would twist and turn and entwine with itself - all elements already present in my work. Nothing writhes more elegantly than the arms of an octopus. The piece isn't based directly on any particular animal - it's not that literal - but it is obliquely inspired by cephalopods. The main design thrust, however, is my technical practice, using what I know is possible and pushing it further than I ever have before. I wanted to make something which would be more intricate, more complex, more entwined with itself than my Forget-me-Knot range, which at the time I first designed it was a considerable advance for me.