The Needle Files

Tuesday, 9 October 2012

Rings @ City Lit

As there were so many beautiful rings produced in the City Lit Live Project with Annoushka I thought I would share some more with you. You can read more about the project on the Annoushka blog here

Images from Top: Katherine Clark, Tomoko Takai, Yeenham Chow, Linda Godfrey, Louise Scholefield.

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

City Lit : Live project with Annoushka, Competition Winners

At the end of the Live project students presented their projects to their peers and then to Liz Olver, design director at Annoushka. Liz then judged the three awards and chose an overall winner who was awarded a day internship at Annoushka.

The awards were as follows from top to bottom: Award for Innovation : Aimee Stein Award for Technical Skill: Bridgitte Pividal Award for Design and overall winner of the internship : Laura Williams All the students received a little bit of feedback from Liz about their work on the judging day. You can see from the images there was a real mix of personal language and students working in both fine jewellery and art jewellery. The students completed a level 2 City and Guilds course at City Lit which runs on one day a week, so you can see the dedication and hard work that goes on both in college and independently. Congratulations to everyone on the course for making such beautiful works! And a huge thank you to Liz Olver and Annoushka for working with the students at City Lit. It was such a valuable experience to see behind the scenes at a successful jewellery company and be able to ask questions. It was also great for the students to have an insight into what the reality of a career within their specialism would entail and how many individual jobs and elements of a businesses there are.

City Lit : Live project with Annoushka

Some more images taken from the designing and model making days. Using traditional and non-traditional tools and materials.

Images of final works to follow...

Tuesday, 4 September 2012

City Lit : Live project with Annoushka

Students on the City and Guilds level 2 course at City Lit worked on a live project with the Jewellery company Annoushka. The project involved a group visit to the store where Liz Olver the design director greeted them. They were given a guided tour, Q&A session and even treated to breakfast! The students then designed and made their own rings, not necessarily to be placed in Annoushka but using the visit and research as a starting point, to start thinking about personal language in their own work and where they might place themselves. There were three awards up for grabs too, one for design, one for technical skill and one for innovation...first up are some images from the design session...

More to follow soon...

Thursday, 24 May 2012

ACJ Diamond Jubilee Tour reaches Llantrisant Gallery

Llantrisant Gallery, Wales 1 - 31 May

Images from top: Zoe Robertson, crown, Flock on Queenie, Joanne Haywood, neckpiece, Blue Death, Hayley Zierold, Kaleidoscopic ring, Shelby Fitzpatrick, neckpiece, Emerald Cut, Tamizan Savill, crown, 'Have you come far?'

The exhibition will be continuing it's tour to: Goldsmiths' Centre, London 11 - 16 June for LJW SH Gallery, Edinburgh 2 - 28 July North Glasgow College 27 - 31 Aug

"Thirty two makers have created pieces especially for the event, resulting in a wide variety of individual interpretations in precious and non-precious materials. All the participating designers have embraced the theme of Jubilee celebration with style, irreverence, humour and panache. Crushed gemstones, sweets and jellies, ribbon, graphite powder, flocked and sublimated materials, rub shoulders with diamonds, silver and 18ct gold, in a glorious celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s sixty years reign."

"The pieces were selected by a distinguished judging panel chaired by Professor Jack Cunningham, which included Corinne Julius, Jacqueline Gestetner, Joanna Hardy, Kath Libbert and Karen Dell’Armi"

"The exhibition opened at the School of Jewellery, Birmingham City University, and then started its tri-nation tour to Llantrisant, South Wales before showing at the newly opened Goldsmiths’ Centre, London – the first exhibition to be held there after its’ own opening Royal exhibition. This is a testament to the Association’s high profile, and to the Centre’s commitment to showing work in non-traditional as well as traditional materials, and used in non-traditional ways.

Mari Ishikawa - Parallel Worlds @ Legnica Jewellery Festival Silver.

" Mari Ishikawa - Parallel Worlds. Japanese artist living in Munich, graduate of the prestigious school of jewellery Hiko Mizuno in Japan and of prof. Otto Künzli’s class at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. Many times awarded. Her works have been presented at exhibitions all over the world and are included in many prestigious collections in Germany, Japan and France. Her main inspiration is Japanese culture."

Mari Ishikawa is showing works at the Legnica Jewellery Festival in Poland. Read more about it here

www.mari-ishikawa.de

Nest

Another wasp nest! This time in the small shed, slightly larger than the last nest in the tool box. We noticed a queen wasp flying into the shed and opened it to find this. Had to take stealthy action with the raid again unfortunately...but amazing to see this small structure. P.s. All bees are welcome and we have some new geraniums for you this year!