Stoned

10.09.2012 | Blog | BY:

Imagine being able to own a piece of jewellery that feels as special as a precious mineral formation or a breath-taking sunset. Jade Mellor, a talented young Designer and Maker- not to mention prolific one woman trinket band – from North West England, creates covetable pieces of statement jewellery from her magical little workshop deep within the English countryside. With an inspiring creative perspective and care for material, Jade crafts each piece by hand to ensure they each have a unique history and emotional value. Her striking work’s inevitably received a lot of attention and has been exhibited and stocked globally – from London to Dubai to San Francisco.

Twin spoke to Jade about her work…

Your Hewn collection of rings is always expanding and intriguing. How do you develop the collection?
Each piece is an experiment to find new textures by pushing the materials. I love discovering new things that I can use and feel that working with raw minerals, and other natural materials, in each original piece, adds to their uniqueness.

What materials have you used recently?
Recently I’ve been inspired by the Galaxy. By using a fragment of a real meteorite it makes you question the journey it’s made through space and time. To use this in something that can be worn everyday excites me – it’s like carrying around a little reminder that there are bigger things around you.

Do you have to seek out the inspiration for each piece or does it find you?
Both, but it helps to have an enquiring mind. When I acquire a specimen to use you will see me holding it up, feeling the weight and placing it on my hand, imagining how it would work as a wearable piece. Looking at how it occurs naturally is also an influence. The way pyrite naturally forms in cubes jutting out at odd angles is so sculptural. I have shelves of books on minerals with amazing close ups and the vast landscapes they form in. I’ll also spend hours wide eyed sketching rare specimens in natural history departments and on outdoor adventures.

What other things influence you?
Sculpture is a massive influence on me, particularly the Neo Concretist movement and also artists like Louise Nevelson. With the Isosceles ring I was thinking of ancient Egypt, the geometry of the pyramids combined with the textures brought on by being blasted by sand dunes over thousands of years. This combined with the use of Lapis lazuli and gold in ancient treasure filled tombs also gave me the colour. I mixed a pigment inspired by this strong blue.

How do you go about making your ideas a reality in jewellery form?
When I get back to the workshop, I might make some drawings, looking closely at the structure and create some first-hand scribbles on how I want it to look as a piece. Photography is a great tool too; in order to understand the angles and textures.

There is a basic shape that I start with that consists of making a block shape with a hole in it, like the pebbles you sometimes find on the beach with a natural hole in them. They are nicknamed Witches‘ stones and have been used as talismans since our ancestors started paying attention to unusual finds like these. From this, and how I have set the stone, I will start to carve out and sand back on the piece to achieve the shape I want, followed by lots of graded polishing to achieve the finish. Because the gold pyrite cube had a ruggedness, I wanted the blue of the resin to have a glossy liquid shine like a polished gem stone or an exotic pool of blue water with the jagged edge of metallic bursting through.

What do you feel makes your pieces so special?
I make each piece individually by hand from start to finish so that they’re  totally bespoke; using sand, shells and stones from a day at the beach or a piece of crumbled masonry from home means each piece has a personal significance. They can trigger a memory of a journey or experience, and in creating a piece that is not only inspired by, but also physically includes them, expresses their preciousness.

Jademellor.com

Words by Kerry Flint

 

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