I was supposed to take the last of my series of sailing classes today, but as those of you in Maritime Canada know: it is very yucky outside! So the last sailing class was postponed to Monday, and thus I am free to get into the studio today!
This is a lucky coincidence (my life seems just full of them!), as I have a piece I am very excited to work on. Monica Bauché, the wonderful hostess and proud co-owner (with her husband Dennis Johnston) of the most excellent FID resto here in Halifax, stopped by to introduce to me her daughter and grandchildren, who were visiting from England. A few years ago, Monica commissioned a piece to commemorate the birth of her first grandchild, her daughter Melanie’s first son. I made this piece, incorporating three of Melanie’s grandmother’s stones, signifying Melanie, her husband, and their child. This piece was well loved. Now a second bébé has arrived, and they came for a studio visit together to talk to me about making a new piece, this time including four of the great-grandmother’s diamonds. I will be taking the initial piece apart, and start over, adding one of their stones. I do not, by the way, usually work with people’s stone which they bring me, but because Monica has bought so many of my pieces, and because Dennis is such an excellent cook, and because I am really into food, I let them!
I was thrilled to work with Melanie, who is an architectural designer, and thus has an excellent sense of design. We began talking about the concept: Melanie, her husband, the two children, and how they all relate. The world they live in , their relationship to each other in this world, and the way in which they are connected. We then started looking at formal elements: straight lines versus curved ones, connections from stone to stone (jewellery design is all about connections!), and how the stones should be placed. We got to a certain stage on paper, but then it was time to move to the studio and start picking up pieces of metal, looking at shapes and forms that just lay about the studio. I have a lot of things lying around that I use as inspiration, and often when I see thing I will pick them up and bring them into the studio. So there is plenty of form and shape there.
While Monica kept the little ones busy (yes, they were part of the consultation, too!), her daughter and I kept talking and laying things on top of each other and next to each other, and talked and moved things and so on and so forth, until the right thing began to emerge, and voila : we had arrived at our design! Rarely does this process go that smoothly, and never that quickly. It was a combination of Melanie liking the piece I had at hand, part of the experiments towards the “Script” necklaces (find it on my jewellery page), and the fact that she had such a good understanding of design elements, so that we ‘spoke the same language’, and thus communication was easy.
Here is a rough outline of Melanie’s future piece:
The pieces of tubing indicate where (roughly) the stones -representing each one of the four family members- will go. You can see the tweezers which we used to move them around.
You have to remember that these are only formal components we are playing with here; the whole thing will look quite different when we are done. We made a couple of more changes to it, and now I will go and make it, since the sailing class was cancelled.
Although I do like sailing, and because I am so new to it, my whole keyboard and computer screen are swaying back and forth still from last night’s sail! I wonder how much longer this ‘being land-sick’ will happen to me. I hope it won’t keep happening while I try to set stones! Wish me luck ….
