Meet The Maker

As the last few weeks of our New Designers Exhibition approaches, we chat to the five talented designers and gain a little more insight into their works and processes.

 

Miki Asai

What has been the inspiration for this collection?

It has been inspired by intangible phenomenon related to Japanese aesthetics of wabi-sabi finding beauty in impermanence. My attempt is capturing those fragments of the fleeting world. 

Your process is pretty unique, please could you talk us through it?

I make hollow shapes with paper, and use Japanese lacquer to cover the surface with eggshell or seashell. This is a simple, but time consuming process.

 

 

Hayley Grafflin

What has been the inspiration for this collection?

I love Cities; I love the sub-culture, the grit, the dirt, the bleakness. To me there is so much beauty in these urban environments such as the soot covered pipes on the London Underground, which are entirely black but are as vibrant as a Neon sign or a rusty old warehouse door which has every shade of orange imaginable. Over the years I have built up a resource of textures, colours and compositions and it was all about expressing this personal narrative through my work in order to convey the beauty that I see.

Your process is pretty unique, please could you talk us through it?

I spent a lot of time doing material research in my final year, I wanted to develop a material which would express my surface influences whilst also allowing me to work in a gestural, intuitive way. I started to work with steel shim, which is usually used in engineering, I laminate the steel with cardboard which I then peel back and work into to get a great matt finish but with lots of flexibility.  I add some control to these gestural moments by mixing the steel with wood and silver, adding colour using low temperature enamel and little technical details in my ball hinge chains and drop earrings.

How would you describe your collection aesthetic?

Dramatic, industrial, bold but sophisticated.

 

Dominika Kupcova

What first attracted you to working with Jewellery?

I’ve loved drawing and making from a very young age and kept being drawn to it even when I considered other career paths, which eventually led me to making the decision of pursuing art and design at university. I loved creating jewellery even before I started studying the discipline formally as it allowed me to experiment with materials and create unique three dimensional objects out of nothing more than an idea in my head and – something I still do to this day!             

What has been the inspiration for this collection?

Science has been a great source of influence for me, as it is something I’ve always been interested in – my work is inspired by DNA and genetics in particular, as I am fascinated by the intricacies of human genetic make-up. I particularly focus on the idea of our DNA being uniformly structured yet resulting in a completely different outcome in each individual person, which echoes the way I create my jewellery – using a very similar starting point the resulting forms are all incredibly varied and complex.

 

 

Cara Budd

What first attracted you to working with Jewellery?

Defiantly a workshop I went to on my foundation degree called 'what is jewellery?' where Zoe Robertson with her curiosity to experiment and play with what jewellery actually is, sparked my own questioning of art on the body.

 

What has been the inspiration for this collection?

Birmingham's urban and industrial vibes. Living in the city for 5 years, I have fallen in love with what most people would describes as the ugly areas.

 

Your process is pretty unique, please could you talk us through it?

Sticking with the industrial influences, I use laser welding to create the structure of my work, as it creates a more urban roughness to the piece. I use stainless steel as the only metal in the work, which forms a natural resistance to the way I shape and mould the piece. The laser welded structures are then powder coated in a matt finish, then a sublimated stainless sheet piece is laser welded over the power coating into place, leaving small welding marks onto the work.

 

 

Adrienn Pesti 

Your process is pretty unique, please could you talk us through it?

 The techniques I use for the collection nurtures my concept through contemporary industrial enamelling on white board to create the black and white patterns and I utilise laser welder to create and merge the main steel structures. I achieve colour and delicate texture with silk clay. The combination of these techniques and materials allow me to create big bold but light and colourful pieces that reflect my concept.

 

How would you describe your collection aesthetic?

The focus is on to connect people from all walks of life by the pieces that carry their own visual language to stimulate interactions in an engaging, often playful manner. Therefore, the work reverts us to an almost childlike curiosity. The bright colours and unique textures appeal to the senses.

 

For more images of each designer work, please visit our Exhibition page.