Keeping Records: Splash Page

Here is a page which provides an introduction and general feeling for the finished Vinyl bangle. I included two images of the piece and a background textured with some of my lace. There is also a discription of the materials used.

Teatime

Having found a shard of porcelain pottery which my mother had kept for the span of my life thus far, I am inspired to make a piece of jewellery with it. I am looking at the notion of Tea-time and the nostalgia behind it.

I have always had decorative tea cups and saucers and teapots around my home and familiar surroundings. As a little girl i was obsessed with miniatures of everyday things- becoming lost in a make-believe world provided my these things. My miniature porcelain tea set was no exception.

My mother, like me, being somewhat of a hoarder, had and has glass cabinets full of old ornate tea cups, tea tins, tea spoons, etc. My Grandmother's house boasted a meticulously displayed collection of  'Royal Family' tea sets. It was the first thing you saw as you entered the house.

Aside from the many memories of play-play teatimes as a child, or those of my mother and her friends, myself and my own friends in my eventual 'grown up' state, and of course the notorious upgrade to the wickedness of coffee, i find it is the actual objects involved which I remember and become particularly sentimental about, and so find pleasure in immortalising in a piece of jewellery once stripped from it's original memory-making function.

                                            This is the beautiful patterning on the piece of pottery

Keeping Records: Vinyl Jewellery

 I have made this vinyl bangle, fashioned after Victorian style cuffs or shirt sleeves. 

 It is made from vinyl record, lace, silver and a button.

 Some lace i had the options of using. i chose the larger more elaborate lace above.

 I have a large collection of buttons-old and new- from which to choose.

My Design Book: A Self Potrait

The cover of my design book

 

 I aimed to create a design book cover which portayed myself and my work in a non-literal sense, which others could recognise as mine without reding a name or seeing an actual picture of me or my work. I think the outcome has a strong sense of nostalgia and history, making you feel like you have stepped in a time machine and seen fragments of the past.

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 I used a record cover for the main cover, which i chose after wading through my collection of LP's.

 I chose the Strauss cover for it's images of old fashioned couples dancing in their ornate gowns, and in trying to give clues as to the materials and silhouetted imagery i like to use in my jewellery, made one of the men's silhouetted in a piece of vinyl record.

 I trimmed the top and bottom borders with a thin lace, to further create the feeling of nostalgia and to add it's unique texture.

 I stitched the edge of the right hand side to practically bind it and because i associate sewing with the old image of a good woman, and of the hand-made products which are so often machine made in today's world.

The back cover is covered with the inner sleeve of the same Strauss LP, which advertises iconic singers and stories of the time. In the above image you can see examples like Nat King Cole and Winnie the Pooh, amongst others, which hold personal sentiment and nostagia from my childhood.

2010 Exhibition at DUT Steve Biko Campus

A History of Lace

I happened upon this link, showing a detailed overview on the history of lace and have chosen a few beautiful images to share.

http://venetianred.net/index.php?s=A+History+of+Lace+in+Seven+Portraits%3A

Duchesse Bobbin Lace Collar, ca. late 19th century.

It is the one costly wear which never vulgarises; jewels worn without judgment can be rendered offensive to good taste in their too apparent glitter, but lace in its comparatively quiet richness never obtrudes itself and is recognised in its true worth and beauty only by those whose superior taste has trained them to see its value. . .

—Mrs. F. Nevil Jackson, A History of Hand-Made Lace, ca. 1900.

19th-century fan with Chantilly lace covering.

Nicholaes Pickenoy, Cornelis de Graeff,
1636, oil on canvas,
(Gemäldegalerie Berlin)

Charles Le Brun, Portrait of Louis XIV, 1661
Oil on canvas

Candlestick Ring/Ornament

925 silver; candles

Sillhouettes in Vinyl (Record), Silver, and Lace

Earrings; 925 silver; vinyl record; "His Master's Voice" inspired silhouette

Lace; vinyl record; silver frame and brooch pin; Gramophone silhouette