Posts tagged Design
Blog 2: The Greek Shard - Elpis Brooch

Another cold, but sunny morning. I have just walked around the frosty field, trying to order my thoughts for the day’s work ahead. It has been a busy few weeks since my last blog and for my second I wanted to follow on from where I left: ‘my Greek journey’. The visit to the museum was accompanied in the weeks since by more reading and listening to audio books on the same theme. The Greek heroes, stories and gods are everywhere in my head. I studied the various photos I took, the books I bought and already had and I thought that in this blog I want to show what all this has resulted in so far.

So, how does a piece come into being? What is my process for translating an inspiration, an idea into a piece? I will try to explain this by following the design and making journey of my new Elpis brooch.

Inspiration

Going in my mind through the rooms of the British Museum once more, recalling the pieces I saw in the cases, the books as well as other archaeological artefacts, I was trying to distil what so captured my imagination. It was most obviously the patterns on the vases, the stories, but it was also something else. It was this magical connection between a ceramic shard – found under layers of soil, showing half a pattern of a once beautiful vase, retelling the story of a mythical Greek hero perhaps – and its finder or viewer. It is this shard – this tangible eye-witness to a past so long ago – that allows the imagination of the viewer to connect with this past, to travel back in time and to immerse oneself in the stories of imagined lives lived long ago.

But even more, I think it is especially this shard, this broken part of something once-whole, this half-pattern, this hint of a story – now lost – painted on the vase that inspires the imagination. What was the vase like as a whole? What figure was painted there? What story was it trying to tell? These are the things I think are magical about the pieces I saw and these were the elements I was trying to use in my work.

Brief

To focus the mind deadlines always help to get things done. A call for submissions for an exhibition entitled Meanings and Messages by the Association for Contemporary Jewellery (ACJ) seemed the perfect opportunity to focus my ideas and design / make a brooch which would hopefully also become the starting point for this year’s collection.

Design Process

With all the above in mind I started by drawing patterns and shapes. This process is usually free and just ‘happens’. What emerged, were rounded, irregular shapes with Greek-inspired golden patterns. The idea of the accidental, the damaged, the half-lost pattern fascinated me.

Thinking about the brief of ‘Meanings and Messages’ I wanted to include something subtle, a message not immediately visible but upon closer inspection revealing a story and endowing meaning to the piece.

One of the Greek characters I was particularly fond of was Eos, ‘rosy-fingered goddess of dawn’. I was drawn to her tragic love story with the mortal Tithonus and liked her depiction as bringing with each sunrise to mankind a sense of hope, renewal and the possibility for a new beginning.

After some deliberation I felt, however, this was somewhat too subtle and chose instead the more well-known spirit of Elpis, the spirit of Hope. She was amongst other spirits in a jar given by Zeus to Pandora. When Pandora opened the jar, all the evil spirits escaped into the world. Elpis alone remained trapped in the jar when - in horror and despair at what she had done – the lid was hastily closed.

Whilst interpretations differ, I like the depiction of Elpis as a young woman, bearing flowers, the hopeful bringer of spring and renewal. Whilst no longer relying on benevolent gods for our fortunes, it is still Hope for a better world and Hope for things to heal and improve that often drives us forward in this world.

These were the thoughts I was hoping to impart in the piece and specifically in the patterns on the front of the piece. Developing the initial ideas led to further drawings and the final design I settled on (images below).

The golden shapes were meant to be like an accidental sample of a continuing pattern in the stylised shape of blossoms with the barely visible lettering of ELPIS underneath, inviting questions as to the meaning of the word and the whole piece.

I wanted the main part of the brooch to be rounded, curved and irregular, reminiscent of a ceramic shard found in an archaeological dig. Thinking about the piece functioning as a brooch, I wanted the structure to be part of the design and opted for holding the ‘shard’ in a setting, similar to the frame in which a ceramic shard may be held or displayed in a museum cabinet. This also allowed me to use the frame as a structure to hold the brooch pin mechanism securely.

Construction

I started by making the silver ‘shard’ with the gold pattern and stamping the letters ELPIS into the silver. Getting the size and shapes of the gold leaf shapes and positioning them correctly was paramount to the design. Once on the silver, the gold pieces could not be changed (other than starting again, of course). The gold was applied in the Keum-Boo technique. See here for more info on the technique.

Making the frame to hold the shard was next, followed by making the pin mechanism and the prongs to hold the shard in place. There are many ways to make a pin mechanism. I wanted a hinged mechanism, made entirely from silver and therefore opted for a slightly heavier pin thickness. The pin was also to have a pin rest at the front of the hinge and was to be restricted in its opening movement to 90°. Once made, the components were soldered onto leaf-shaped plates on the back of the frame.

When making the prongs I needed to consider their position as well as the curvature of the shard. This required the making of small steps within the prongs to securely hold the shard on the frame. When all was finished I set the shard onto the frame and riveted the pin into the hinge mechanism. Below are some images of the finished piece.

I was really happy with the result and felt that I had managed to capture some of the magic the Greek artefacts hold for me. It remains to be seen whether the piece will be chosen for the exhibition. Fingers crossed! In any case, it was a good starting point and I have since made further pieces on the same theme.









My First Blog: Ancient Greece

Over Christmas 2021 I planned a new project for this year: an exciting and hopefully inspiring and sustaining idea for me. I am going to write a monthly blog. One article per month about … anything really. Anything that has relevance to my work as a jeweller and creative person. I often wish for a space to explain more, talk more and I think this might be a good space for it. We will see how it goes. I hope you will find it interesting!

Here now my first article, maybe a little different from the others I am planning, but I wanted to start with something special, something more personal …

Ancient Greece

Friday morning, 21st January 2022. I am on a train to London, excited as a child on her first school trip. I have not been to a museum in a long time and this is therefore really special, a gift to myself. The kids are in school and I have around six hours to get to London and back, walk to the museum and look around.

The weather is cold, frosty and the sun is somewhere behind the clouds but I am just getting in the mood, thinking about the hot sun in ancient Greece. It is taking me back to September 1997 when I went to Greece on a four-week travel scholarship to research contemporary Greek jewellery. This came at the end of my three years at Central St Martins for my jewellery degree. I had really needed a break. The trip took me to Athens, Crete and Ioannina. I visited countless museums, saw endless Greek vases, jewellery and just really enjoyed being away from London.

24 years later, a book gift from my husband and time over Christmas got me reading. I had already started on Greek mythology a year ago when both my husband and daughter read the Greek myths. Reading all these stories, imagining the scenes, landscapes and art I longed to be close to Greek history, Greek artefacts again. I have numerous books on Greek art, patterns and jewellery but seeing them in real life is different.

I finally get to the British Museum. It is still early but in the end I only manage to see two rooms but take in every last detail. School children with their notepads run around, trying to find this or that object on their list. It does not really interest them. I understand. What has changed for me? The time has come, it is the right moment. It makes sense.

Room 12 is about Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece in the Bronze Age, apparently the time in which Homer places the events of the Illiad and the Odyssey. Standing in front of the cases holding pieces of jewellery, pottery and carved stones seals I feel humbled and amazed. I have a book, entitled Greek Gold, of an exhibition I had seen at the British Museum in 1994, just as I was studying jewellery design. The close-up images are wonderful to look at to really appreciate the workmanship and detail of the pieces.

However, standing in front of the show-case of pieces found on Crete I am blown away by the scale. Minute, tiny balls of granulation and the most delicate filigree wires adorning the body of a fly or bee. No more than perhaps 20 mm long, the gold is worked with amazing expertise and skill.

(My image does not do justice to the piece.) Imagining the simplicity of tools and equipment available then - 1700-1550 BCE - the pieces attain yet another level of wonder.

Slowly, I work my way around the exhibits until I reach the next room: 13 – Greece 1050-520 BCE. Getting even more excited I cannot wait to see the painted vases with scenes of the Greek myths. But before I do, there are the examples of the Geometric period – the patterns I had come for.

I come to a vessel entitled The Elgin Amphora (760-750 BCE), this piece encapsulates the beauty of ancient artefacts for me. I stand in close proximity to this amphora, I can almost touch it, touch what a person, an artist created almost 2800 years ago. I can see him (I guess it would have been a man) in my mind, I can imagine a person with daily struggles, with a certain taste, how he sits in a workshop painting the vase. I see the perfection he created and yet, how the passage of time has added an extra dimension, a historical, imperfect, human dimension.

But it is not just the passage of time that I can see as damage and decay in the pieces on display, it is their use, their interaction with people from that time. I imagine how the jewellery adorned the women, the occasions they wore them, the person using one of these ceramic vessels for storing grains or oil – and to me this is the essence, the beauty of history: when objects open a window to a past world, to the lives and struggles of people long forgotten but whose lives somehow live on in these objects.

Finally, I turn around and come to the vases with mythological scenes. I smile under my mask and it feels as if I am meeting long-lost friends. I admire the beauty of the composition of the vessels, their proportions, the delicately drawn faces, limbs and clothes on the vases and the scenes come to life. I want to remember it all, but know I will buy another book to carry them home with me to live with me, to nourish and inspire my own work for some months to come.

[Amphora depicting Heracles bringing the Erymanthian boar to Eurystheus during his twelve labours; made in Athens around 550BCE.]