A natural progression

Pretty soon I’m going to be withdrawing the copper items from my website. The stock I have left will be on offer at any stalls I take until it’s gone, but I won’t be doing any more in copper after that. I’m also winding down the amount of things I offer in plated metals. The main reason for this is simply lack of demand. My customer’s prefer real silver and to be perfectly honest, so do I.

I am however, currently working on introducing a new material – wood.

Some months ago I saw the work of a company who make beautifully carved wooden jewellery (at a price!) and was inspired. As those who know my work will be aware, much of my designs are drawn from trees, plants and leaves. It seemed somewhat fitting then, to start working with wood and see what happened.

My first experiments were with some offcuts from my own infant cherry tree, put aside some years before with a mind to ‘do something’ with them.

With the aid of my multi-tool, a few gemstones and a blissful ignorance of what I was doing, the results were as below -

I liked them, but they were very small, due to the small size of the branches I’d made them from and very delicate. Too delicate really to sell with any conscience and very difficult to make more than one of each because the branches are unique so I put them aside and went off for a little think for a few weeks.

I’ve since been on my holidays to Cornwall, where I visited the Lost (well, found now) Gardens of Heligan. A beautiful place, very inspiring with lovely woods and massive rhododendrons and palm trees. They also have their own wood shop, and sell kiln-dried lengths of Heligan wood for you to carve or turn or whatever. I bought a block of oak and a length of spalted ash  to see if the muses would be taken with them.

I’ve come up with a few designs using the ash, easier to replicate than the first ones and without any gemstones so far. The wood is gorgeous, with a nice grain running through it giving the designs a stripey effect as you can see -

I’ve been quite pleased with how they’ve turned out, it’s been a fun adventure working out how to make them and figuring my way around a new medium and I hope to bring them to the website fairly soon if they recieve a positive response – so please do leave any comments or suggestions that occur to you. No one needs an WordPress account to comment here.

As for further designs I have mind, I think I may invesigate the possibilities of making a version of my silver leaf pendants in wood too and may also work on a pent. I also have half a mind playing with the idea of carving a reservoir into a shaped wooden pendant and encasing a dried flower in resin within that reservior, but it’s been a long time since I worked with resin. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions/inspiration!

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