During lockdown, I set up a a studio in the basement of my flat. It’s messy and damp, but it has been a wonderful space to have. It is very makeshift. I use paint buckets as stools and often work on floor. There is a fire extinguisher prominently installed to ease my flatmates concerns about using a LPG torch down there.
Before I made jewellery, I used to used to use tin snips and cut out baroque flower forms from aluminium, riveting the components together and spray painting them.
Not having access to a proper workshop set up, I have returned to making these floral works. With the skills I have learnt from jewellery, these work have been much easier to make. I have been able to make these forms more elaborate.
I want these flowers to be like 16th Century French silversmithing filtered through Bunnings Warehouse and boy racer car aesthetics. I am trying to make them less pretty, and been using sickly beige and neon colours.
Cutting out components and playing with possible colours and arrangements.
I also recently started making a series of brooches titled Brustwarze. This is the german word for nipple, which literally translates to ‘breast wart’.
This box brooch is the first thing I made in my lockdown makeshift studio. It was made with very limited tools, which was a very useful exercise. While I am definitely not a Modernist or a purist in any form, I admire Kobi Bosshard’s rule of only using 5 tools, but really knowing how to use them.
My girlfriend Meg recently smashed her elbow and had to have a metal plate put it. When I saw the x-ray, it felt very this metal form and it’s relation to the body jewellery-like felt very jewllery-like. I have been enjoying thinking of this metal plate as interior jewellery.
Jack xoxo