Seven Brooches

I observe the effects on my garden of an exceptionally capricious spring. I watch and listen to the burst of bud, to the feeding of baby birds, to the lash of wind, of rain, of hail. I admire the beauty of a torn petal. I test the weight of stone. I draw, write, saw, carve, engrave, paint, watch, listen. Always I watch. Watch and wonder. The garden and the stone. (Was the first garden a grave?)

The ability to make some thing — a brooch for example — locates one in a propitious position in which the intangible world of the imagination unites with the material world. The event of imagining is transformed into a tangible object. The fall of a petal — heard, seen, or simply notional — instigates a poetic intrigue in which flower can become flesh, or shadow, and is then fashioned from stone, thus constituting a durable record that commemorates the original elusive and ethereal event.

This development into a substantial form is cyclic, cumulative, self-reflexive. As idea approaches matter, through a strategy of playful invention, the materials selected and the processes through which they can be manipulated inform subsequent evolutions of the idea. This is an infinitely fascinating and somewhat arcane pursuit, which evokes the alchemical origins of jewellery.

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