This May, we celebrate the traditional art of filigree – an incredible craft that has been used in designs for hundreds of years. Filigree is a form of intricate wire work used in jewellery and other small forms of metalwork.
Read more about the artists and their work here.
Our Contemporary Filigree exhibition celebrates a curated selection of artists using this wonderful technique.
Born into a batik-producing family, I see the world as a series of motifs and patterns. My designs fuse Batik iconography, patterns found in the natural world and architecture and objects. I use the filigree technique to create my pieces. The process involves drawing, twisting and manipulating fine wires into lace-like patterns. The patterns are then arranged and fit into a frame to form a specific design. I mainly work with recycled precious materials, especially sterling and fine silver, because of their malleable and lightweight characteristics. They are also durable, which means that my jewellery will be able to withstand the test of time, thus transforming them from objects of adornment into heirloom items that are rooted in tradition.
Descended from a textile-producing family in the city of Batik, Pekalongan, Indonesia-born Edwin Charmain’s jewellery practice specialises in filigree jewellery inspired by the Indonesian batik arts and traditions. By combining traditional Indonesia Batik motifs and observing the man-made world around him, Charmain transformed what was once a two-dimensional waxing technique on top of fabric into a three-dimensional jewellery object, celebrating the life, courage and wisdom of his kinsmen.
Charmain holds a Masters degree in design jewellery from Central Saint Martins and is one of the Arts Council England Exceptional Promise endorsees. His work has been exhibited internationally and has received numerous awards in the field.
As a jeweller I aim to explore the sensuality of the body through the tactility of materials. My work is fuelled by a deeply rooted interest in textiles, both in terms of borrowed techniques and the range of visual references. More recently plant forms have inspired new ways of construction and a wider use of colour through the use of semi-precious stones.
Susan Cross graduated from Middlesex Polytechnic University in 1986, setting up her first studio in London before relocating to Edinburgh in 1989. Susan has been a part-time lecturer in the Jewellery & Silversmithing department at Edinburgh College of Art since this time and in 2008 was awarded a Readership following her success in the Jerwood Applied Arts Award for Jewellery in 2007. Alongside her teaching she has continued to develop her work exhibiting both nationally and internationally. Susan has also been invited to initiate projects and workshops in Finland, India, New Zealand & South Korea and awarded a travel bursary by the Scottish Arts Council to study Japanese textiles.
Public Collections include:
V&A Museum, London; V&A Museum, Dundee; National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh; Crafts Council, London; The Goldsmiths’ Company, London; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Edinburgh Royal Infirmary; Alice & Louis Koch Collection, Switzerland; Spencer Museum of Art, USA; Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, USA.
Andrew Lamb graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2000. He completed his Masters at the Royal College in 2004 and now exhibits and sells his award winning jewellery worldwide, with work featuring in prestigious public collections in the UK and abroad.
His interest in illusion and the mesmerizing visual effects of ‘Optical Art’ are cleverly adapted into his jewellery designs. By incorporating these principals, his aim is to create striking, yet delicately shaped pieces which appear to shift and change as the eye moves across them.
Andrew also finds inspiration in the linear patterns and structures abundant in nature and woven textiles. With these in mind, he uses a combination of fine lengths of 18ct gold and silver wire to construct sculptural, three-dimensional jewellery. The wire, layered, twisted or overlapping to create pieces with rippling textures and subtle colour variations playfully drawing the eye and creating a moment of surprise.
Permanent collections include:
V&A, London; Crafts Council, London; Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum; The Alice and Louis Koch Collection; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; The Goldsmiths’ Company, London; National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh; Galerie Marzee, The Netherlands; The Royal College of Art, London; The Royal Mint, London; Museums and Galleries Edinburgh; V&A Wedgwood Museum, Stoke-on-Trent.
“The aesthetic qualities that I perceive to be beautiful and strive to achieve in my work are centred around intense decorative features encompassed by sweeping lines and simplified forms. Of equal importance and beauty however, is the process of their creation.”
Growing up in a highly artistic family it was only natural that Helen would follow in a similar vein. At age 13 she consciously decided that she couldn’t live a life without some form of art as a career. She achieved her BA Hons degree in Silversmithing, Jewellery and Allied Crafts at London Guildhall University in 2005, then went on to complete her postgraduate studies at the Bishopsland Educational Trust in Berkshire. As a silversmith specialising in filigree wire work, Helen London chose this craft for its ability to combine aesthetic beauty with engineering challenge.
Helen attributes her passion for creating to an instinctive nature as humans to use our hands and tools to manipulate materials. This is combined with her own innate tendency towards intense focus and perfectionism. She looks to Japanese and Islamic arts and craft as well as Art Nouveau for inspiration. The human body, antlers, birds and other natural forms have all provided starting points for her designs.
Filipa Oliveira is a specialist in contemporary filigree jewellery. Her work has been widely recognised and awarded by numerous jewellery institutions, as the Goldsmiths’ Company. She uses this ancient technique in an innovative way to lend detail and heritage to her work. This historical element allows both the past and present to be encompassed within each piece of jewellery and is evocative of different times and cultures.
Filipa has built a reputation as an expert in filigree and a leader in disseminating this unique knowledge within the industry, having taught the technique nationally and internationally. She trained as a goldsmith in Portugal and in Scotland at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, graduating in 2011 with 1st class honours. Filipa holds a passion for this art, which she shares with her students in her Contemporary Filigree Courses, and in the Contemporary Filigree Jewellery book, of which she is the author.
I aim to achieve an aesthetic result that obscures the technical rigours of its production. I am preoccupied mainly with the surfaces of precious metals (which I always affect in some way before construction begins) and with form – juxtaposing the play of light, reflection, lustre with characteristic angle, curve and line – inspired by an abstraction of nature and art, and particularly of the human form. I am intrigued, too, by the potential for dialogue between inner and outer planes, with random patterns imprisoned within strictly delineated edges, the inclusion of chance, and the visual tension created by the contrast and harmony of all these factors.
A Lecturer at the Royal College of Art from 1972 until 1994, Mina has made a significant contribution to art education and has provided a great source of inspiration to her students; many of whom have become distinguished jewellers. Winner of the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize for Jewellery in 2000 for ‘consistent innovation and a significant contribution to contemporary jewellery… for subverting and taking precious metal techniques to the extreme’, Mina also received an OBE for services to Art in 2012. In 2011, the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths honoured her career with the retrospective exhibition, Dialogues in Gold, which brought together a selection of her work spanning almost her entire career to date. It included pieces that are still regarded as seminal today; ground-breaking pieces for contemporary practice in precious metal. This was followed by Touching Gold, an exhibition which toured the UK.
Jacqueline Mina’s technical brilliance, allied with her strong artistic curiosity has resulted in a range of sensuous, understated work, which has a rare aesthetic presence in the field of contemporary gold jewellery. Her superb technical accomplishment in manipulating precious metals is combined with a fine, painterly eye. Sources of inspiration include the Venetian Palazzo Fortuny with its textile drapes; featuring devoré velvet with their etched patterns.
Public collections include: National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh; V&A Museum, London; Cooper–Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York; Crafts Council, London; The Goldsmiths’ Company, London; Leeds Museums and Galleries.
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