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Jewellery & Silverware Inspired by Architecture is an illustrated collection of projects by Vicki Ambery-Smith carried out in silver and gold reflecting the many interesting personal stories that combine people with a place of significance portrayed in miniature for a special event in their lives. This is the story of forty years of making architecturally-based silverware, from small domes and columns on stud earrings to larger bespoke presentation pieces. The author charts her development from student days to acquisitions by the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts amongst others. Her insights into how to render buildings such as the Pantheon in Rome, the Sydney Opera House or Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre into a brooch, a ring or a box make fascinating reading.
Vicki Ambery-Smith creates delicate and ornate small-scale jewellery and boxes inspired by real and imaginary buildings. Especially attracted to the structural clarity and minimal ornament of Romanesque and Renaissance architecture, she also uses forms reminiscent of the modernist structures of Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright.
As all her jewellery is designed to be worn, and worn comfortably, the three-dimensional architectural structures on which she bases her work must be adapted rather than merely replicated in miniature, with the effect of distancing them further from their original referent. In this way, attention is drawn to the form of the pieces, and their intricate detail and definition. Far more than a representation of a building, each becomes an exquisite study of shape, surface, light and space as Vicki explores the language of architecture herself.
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Own Art is a national initiative that makes buying contemporary art and craft affordable by providing interest-free credit for the purchase of original work.
