Line Project

Our second project in Jewellery Design was to produce a neckpiece of brooch, inspired by the techniques of one jeweller and the philosophies and style of one artist, using wire to construct. For my jeweller I chose Hanna Hedman as I love her oversized range of neckwear and its resemblance to seaweed and organic objects.

I'd studied Egon Schiele in 6th year at high school and revisited him as my inspirational artist because his use of line and the way he elongates his subjects is really interesting.

I also really like his stylised technique of drawing hands and fingers. After watching Life a few weeks ago, I love you David Attenborough!, I chose Seahorses and Sea Dragons to base my piece on, and really wanted to produce a large necklace. After lots of sketches of adorable pigmy seahorses and leafy seadragons I began making a small necklace for my sister. It developed from a small article I'd read on these sea creatures, and a phrase that kept coming back to me was "wheeling around in unison", referring to their "pre-dawn dance", during courtship. I kept picturing the little seahorses spinning round in a circle, on a wheel, and this led to several sketches of seahorse carousels!

I played around with making wire hangers that I could attatch the mini seahorses I'd cut out of copper, and different lengths of chain. I hadn't appreciated how time consuming chain making is, but at the same time it's kind of relaxing... Stupid me decided on a long, thin chain, resulting in hours and hours and hooooouuuuurs of cutting small jump rings, attatching them, soldering them and repeating... Looking at my macete now, I realise that I'd rather have the seahorses elongated, and more stylised like Egon Schiele. This isn't my final idea, but it's a good way to practice techniques without the samples going to waste in my sketchbook. Once this one is completed, I plan to silver plate it and give it to my sister for Christmas.... nothing like saving the pennies.

For my final neckpiece however, I hope to use this idea to hang down the back of the wearer, and make a large round tube like structure for the front, hopefully using knitted wire, but I'm still not sure how to do it... I'm glad that at the end of the project, I will (hopefully) have produced a smaller necklace to wear as an everyday accessory, and to also have a larger structural piece that could be worn on special occasions, or for fashion events.