bauble zeitgeist?

Estelle variation

The Estelle workshop is proving very popular, it's fun and easy,  and works up into prettiness in all sorts of variations. it is also a proving to be a fun class to explore colour and sparkly mixtures.
I'll carry on teaching it over the next year as requests keep coming in. In one class, we had a long discussion about math and beads, so I decided to tweek the basic bezel and work up some examples of how it can be used to make three dimensional forms.
In the next class, I shared the discussion and showed the baubles which were the result of my experiments. I had several requests to offer it as a follow up class.
This is always a lovely thing about teaching, to have students wanting to explore an idea some more, and to have more on tap to offer their enthusiasm.

I was just about to show and share on my facebook page... finger hovering on the upload button, when I noticed a very similar bauble being shown off proudly as a latest creation. The math determines there can be only so many ways to make a ball shape with bezelled stones; indeedy, a quick pootle round the facebook beading community revealed at least four more... so no show and share for me then!  I'll keep mine within the boundaries of my class as an interesting discussion point.

Estelle baubles

This got me thinking about how design ideas so often emerge en masse. There are the obvious ones, like everyone playing with a new bead shape (spikes or Rizo's anyone?). There are also more subtle ones and they can be profoundly frustrating!
I've more than once worked long and hard on a really exciting new idea, only to consign it to the 'Doh! can't use that now' folder.
And, yes in the pursuit of honesty, I do sometimes see designs that make me wince at their similarity to work I've already published.

That we get excited by the same processes with similar results is, I guess, inevitable. That we all fall in love with the latest colours, finishes or shapes of beads, likewise. We're also all working under the same powerful but subtle influences of media, trends, fashions and styling, even more so now, with a whole worlds worth available at the touch of a button, and arriving daily in the in-box.

For me, it's about searching out ways to have a genuinely authentic voice, and coincidences like these, I take as a gentle reminder to try again and find something new and fresh to say.

Sparkly Christmas London

Lynn and Gillian

Had a lovely day in London yesterday with my friends Gillian, bead artist extraordinaire, Lynn, who owns a little slice of beading heaven in Dorset, and Jackie who is a gifted bookbinder and lover of all things craft.
We met at the V&A for a visit to the Power of Making exhibition before it closes. Fascinating and inspiring, and definitely thought provoking, not least in the selection of crafts and media. We had a lively debate about it over lunch in the divinely tiled dining rooms. In contrast to some of the sleek computer generated modernist objects we'd just been looking at, the comfortingly familiar font and the soft yet achingly lovely colour palettes of this completely tiled space were kind of reassuring in one way, yet suddenly and overwhelmingly fussy in another, definitely experiencing visual overload!!

Totally tiled tea rooms

Next, we spend several happy hours dribbling over the glass in the newly laid out Jewellery Gallery. With some of the exhibits comes that lovely feeling of greeting an old and much loved friend, often seen in favourite books, but so much more beautiful in real life. With others, the brain tick ticking away over shapes and how to redevelop them using just threads and beads instead of heat and metal and hammers... oooh!!! more experience overload, and still the bookstore to browse!
I treated myself to the book of the exhibition so I can read up some more about the thinking behind it.
Then there was just time to pop up the road to look at the Christmas windows created for Harrods by the Swarovski team. Best seen on a dark and rainy evening, the Enchanted Forest theme is lavish, monocrome, slightly strange and attracting lots of admiration from the passing crowds of shoppers. You can watch the beautiful and otherworldly film created for Harrods online by Anryk Bregman of unit9 here. Or listen to Anryk talk about it here. Or you can see my pocket camera snapshots of the bits I liked best.

moonlight and filigree, window detail 

dove window detail

pretty sparkly lovely things

Definitely a brilliant day. From the serious business of craft and technology embracing new media; tempered by the reassuring evidence that true craftsmanship is breathtakingly beautiful and timeless in the jewellery gallery; to the awesome power of brand to conjure and inspire a creative and completely ephemeral world. Best of all, to see it all in the company of good friends.

We're planning to hop on a train to Paris next to visit the Musee D'Orsey...

 now that will be a grand day out.