Meet the Maker

This is ‘Meet the Maker’, where you can get to know the story behind the aesthetics. This week we chat to Alisa Morrant one of the five designers featuring in our latest exhibition.

Alisa talks about the inspiration behind her pieces, the origins of her brilliant designs and how we are all instinctively jewellery designers... 

About you? I am a designer and my work explores how the quality of our lives can be improved by using everyday objects to mindfully celebrate ordinary moments…..memento vivere.

What first attracted you to working with Jewellery? Jewellery is a powerful psychological medium for self-expression and exploring cultural issues. Its materiality was used by primordial humans to instinctively express themselves by self-adornment using objects from their environment, whereas today, our jewellery wearing is predominantly driven by materialism. Through the field of enquiry that is jewellery, I wanted to investigate both the concept and relationship of value, capitalism and happiness.

What has been the inspiration for this collection? My inspiration is happiness, or rather the commodification of it and its use as a social indicator of a successful life.

Today, ironically, the perceived pressure of achieving this transient, intangible state of mind is instead, one of the factors contributing to anxiety, lack of contentment and even depression. I wanted to explore how this cycle could be broken by primordially using jewellery as a strategy to build sustainable contentment, wellbeing and emotional resilience.

What are your plans for the future? To continue doing what I am doing now …..

What advice would you give someone who is trying to become a jewellery designer? We are all instinctively jewellery designers already but have forgotten how to adorn ourselves using everyday objects in our environment that we currently overlook the beauty of.

Your favourite quote or words of wisdom?

Spontaneously and transiently wear objects for the expressive joy and personal satisfaction of doing so to celebrate the moment while you are in it.