Jewellery
The art of body ornamentation combines disciplines and materials to create both wearable and art jewellery. As well as more traditional gold, silver, and precious stones, plastics, ceramics and non-precious materials are also used. Some makers create jewellery from found objects, like buttons or ephemera broadening our preconceptions about what we consider to be valuable.
Terms: Precious metals such as rhodium, platinum, palladium and gold require great skill to work and are an expensive raw material. In contemporary costume jewellery plastics such as acrylic and resin are used much as tortoiseshell or seashells might have been used historically. Ceramics and textiles may also be used, as jewellery crosses over the discipline boundaries.
Look out for: Hallmarks are applied to precious metals by an assay office to verify the content or purity and may be accompanied by a maker’s mark or the date of manufacture. Jewellery Making by Emma Gale and Ann Little is part of the Teach Yourself series by Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, and a good step-by-step guide and introduction to the making processes involved in modern jewellery today.
Katy Bevan ©2006
clockwise from top left: Marlene McKibbin, Grainne Morton, Noon Mitchelhill, Catherine Mannheim