'Onyx and Coral Brooch'

Being a member of FIND, changed my whole career as a jeweller.
It is such a creative and supportive environment, after 12 years of making I feel like I am in the right place. There is such a diversity amongst the member’s works, it is almost a selection of different approaches towards the practice. I like the freedom of curating and displaying my own unique designs.
For the FIND 20th anniversary exhibition, I wanted to go back in the history and revisit my favourite era in creative designs, I would like to call it machine age rather than Art Deco. I believe that covers both the Art Deco and Modernist periods.
I am always obsessed with the mechanism, and the use of mechanism as a feature of the design itself, so rather than hiding them I like to emphasize them.
More important to me than the value of the materials are technical execution and precision of design.
I used stepped designs of circles or squares to provide dramatic dimension. I used onyx in each design and added lapis lazuli, coral and moonstone to give contrast colours and dynamic to my designs. The stones were set in an unusual way with textured geometric, decorative shaped bezels.
I loved the process in the making even though it was quite challenging…