Posts in exhibition

Blog 17: Bovey Tracey Craft Festival, 9-11 June 2023

Time has passed quickly and we are already in June today! Preparations are running high for my next event: the wonderful Craft Festival at Bovey Tracey in Devon.

If you would like to come here is some key information for you:

When and Where:

9-11 June 2023 at Bovey Tracey, Devon, Sat Nav Coordinates: TQ13 9AL. For more information on how to get there, click here.

I will be at Stand No: C36

Opening times:

Friday - Sunday 10am - 5pm.

Tickets:

Please click here to buy your tickets in advance.

Workshops and activities:

As always, there will be plenty to do and see: hands-on craft workshops, craft demos, events for families, live music and amazing food – not to mention all the many fantastic makers who will be exhibiting at the Craft Festival! Please click below to:

If you would like to book a workshop, please click here.
If you would like to see a list of exhibitors, please click here.

I will be at stand C 36 (Marquee C). Do come and say hello, if you are visiting.

Here are some of the pieces I will bring along with me:

detail_necklace_oval_pendant_gold_pattern_hbm160_0331.JPG

Craft Fairs, Blog, Events, exhibition, NewsHendrike Barz-Meltzer1 June 2023craft festival, craftfestival, event, craft fair, craft and design fair, Bovey TraceyComment

Blog 14: Cheltenham Craft Festival and Other News

This is a more ‘traditional’ blog, in which I’ll share some of my recent activities and news.

Next week, from 10-12th March 2023, I will be taking part in the Craft Festival at Cheltenham Town Hall. It will be my first time there and I am really looking forward to it. I have been busy making some new pieces and have worked a lot on my display, which I have been wanting to change for some time. Difficult to summarise, but probably best if I share photos of my stand when I am in Cheltenham.

On Thursday, 2nd March at 2pm I will also be chatting to Sarah James, Director of the Craft Festival, live on Instagram. To watch, log onto the Craft Festival page on Instagram at 2pm tomorrow.

In case you are near Cheltenham and would like to visit the next week, here are a few details and links:

Dates:

10-12th March 2023

Venue:

Cheltenham Town Hall, Cheltenham, GL50 1QA

Stand: 21

Opening times:

10-5pm Friday & Saturday

10-4pm Sunday

Tickets:

You can purchase tickets in advance by clicking this link. I also still have one free ticket to give away. To find out how to have a chance to win, please see my Instagram post of 28th February – it is super easy to enter.

Activities:

There will be lots on offer this weekend, including workshops, craft demonstrations, talks and activities for the whole family and children in particular. There will be a café on site and of course around 100 fantastic makers and their work. Click here for further details.

Exhibitors:

For a preview of all the 100 exhibitors, click here.

Below are some of the new pieces I shall be taking to the Craft Festival. There are not yet on the website but hopefully soon.

Other making news:

Teaching: In January a new teaching term started and the focus of my demonstrations this term is tool making – mainly how to make your own steel stamps or chasing tools and how to prepare a graver for engraving. I love teaching and enjoy the feedback from my students and the opportunity to learn myself.

For more information on the course I teach at Rachel Jeffrey Jewellery School, please click here. Rachel recently appeared as one of the mentors on the BBC1 programme Make it at Market (episodes 8 & 14). To watch please click this link here.

New Ideas: In the last few weeks my daughter and I have been watching many episodes on ancient Egypt and we are both fascinated by it. We went to the British Museum and saw the wonderful Hieroglyphs Exhibition as well as the Egyptian galleries. Needless to say, we bought various books and I am working on ideas for a new collection based on this. Below some of my favourites. The image on the far left stands out. It is a work-in-progress, still showing the lines drawn for the artist who was carving the symbols. An amazing communication across time!

Goldsmiths’ Fair: Influenced by the above, I made a new brooch as part of my application for Goldsmiths’ Fair in the autumn and we shall see if I am lucky this year.

Commissions: I have also been working on a number of commissions over the last few months and was very pleased with the results. It was lovely working through the ideas with the respective clients, to arrive at pieces which will hopefully give them joy for years to come.

Left to right: The first was an engagement ring in 18ct white and yellow SMO gold with two Canada Mark diamonds and a Fair Trade emerald. The second is a pair of 18ct yellow SMO gold earrings and the third a cuff in textured and recycled silver: Here are some images:

Environmental: My daughter’s school organised a litter pick last Saturday. It was amazing to see that so many families turned up and in just 1 ½ hours we collected 62 plastic bags of rubbish and recycling just from the local area! Though it was sad to see just how much and what people feel free to discard – it was also uplifting to hear all the positive and encouraging comments of passers-by.

For now, there is still plenty to organise for next week’s show. If you do come by, do say hello – I will be at Stand 21.

Take care,

Hendrike

exhibition, Inspiration, sustainable practice, Environmental activities, News, Craft Fairs, EventsHendrike Barz-Meltzer28 February 2023news, environmental, litter picking, goldsmiths' fair, new work, Cheltenham Craft Fair, Events, Upcoming show, Craft FairComment

Blog 6: Interrupted Patterns

Next week, I will finally take part in an in-person craft fair again! I really look forward to the meeting the other makers, visitors and having the chance to talk about my work, my ideas and processes.

Being self-employed and working on my own the majority of the time, these moments to share and to get feedback on my work are really precious!

In this blog, I wanted to share the thoughts and ideas behind my new collection, Interrupted Patterns, that I will be launching at the Craft Festival at Bovey Tracey from 17-19th June.

In my earlier posts (January and February) I wrote about my visit to the British Museum, my current fascination with ancient Greek myths and the creation process of a particular brooch (Elpis – Hope), which is now part of the current Meanings and Messages touring show of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery. (Please see the link for touring dates and venues.) I have also written about this amazing exhibition in my May blog where I focus on my favourites of the show.

The Elpis brooch led on to the making of a second one (The Greek Shard II) and the exploration of patterns.

Elpis Brooch

The Greek Shard II

Patterns have always fascinated me. In 2005 I travelled to Portugal and was amazed by the tile work on the facades of buildings. I took so many photos without really knowing why. (This was a few years before I returned to making).

I loved how the patterns were constructed; how each individual tile was part of a larger image and I wondered how they were constructed and imagined in the first place.

The images below show how the overall pattern on a wall was often created by the corners of the tiles, rather than the full area of each tile. (Click to enlarge!)

Earlier this year, when visiting family in Jerusalem, I went with my father-in-law to the Museum of Islamic Art. We both agreed it was a treasure trove of amazing artefacts of different places and times. Again, patterns (and of course the examples of exquisite ancient jewellery) struck me. (Click to enlarge!)

Back at home, I leafed through the many books I accumulated over the years, trying to bring it all together. The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones being a favourite. I kept returning to a lens-shape that was used in patterns of different cultures. This simple shape would be arranged in a variety of ways to make up complex patterns.

When writing my February blog about Greek ceramics and the creation of my brooch, I started to understand that I was particularly drawn to the broken shards of pottery found in the ground: the pieces on which only parts of patterns could be seen. Those pieces, where the actions of time had done their part in removing some of the original decorations, leaving behind only traces, hints of once beautiful and complex patterns.

It was exactly this, that fascinated me: what happens in the mind when a pattern is interrupted. It seems that the mind seeks to continue it, imagining what it could have been, making connections of its own accord and perhaps making up stories about the use and users of the original object.

These broken shards of a Greek amphora illustrate the point. You can read here the story of the piece, its original use and how they were pieced together again.

Interrupted or disjointed patterns are beautiful in themselves, they may no longer be perfect, but by being disjointed they form new, irregular patterns. As before, the mind may continue them or perhaps seeks to repair them, making them whole again.

For my new pieces I then started to draw random outlines containing patterns, usually with combinations of the lens-shapes and lines. As I continued, I focussed on a particular layout of the lens shape in formations of four around a dot.

I imagined the pieces to be made in two different techniques – one being made with the Keum-Boo process that I have used in the past to create, for example, my stripy pieces; the other being made with 18ct gold. The latter was to be quite different in character to the first, giving a raised, more three-dimensional surface than before.

Having started out with the two brooches on random outlines, I wanted these pieces to have regular backgrounds, so that the viewer would concentrate on the patterns.

The following images show the process of making these pieces (Click to enlarge!)

Snippets of gold before melting

Silver piece textured and domed

Scale of gold strips before being cut

Gold pieces roughly shaped

Filed gold ovals fluxed with borax

Silver and gold pieces fluxed before soldering

The whole piece after being soldered.

Here, a few images of one of the final pieces. It is made from recycled sterling silver and 18ct Single Mine Origin (SMO) gold.

Following on from these pieces, I continued doing drawings for the Keum-Boo pieces. I moved away from the regular lens-shape and allowed my drawings to become freer. It reminded me a little of painting, using long brush-strokes to make ink marks on paper.

Some of these drawings are shown below and the ones on the right led to the small lapel pin brooch below, which is currently exhibited at Contemporary Applied Arts, London.

Design, Design Process, exhibition, Inspiration, Visual DiaryHendrike Barz-Meltzer11 June 2022brooch, brooches, design process, exhibition, Bovey Tracey, Craft FestivalComment

Blog 5: Meanings and Messages

Meanings and Messages is the title of the current touring exhibition of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery (ACJ) that opened on 30th April 2022 at the St George’s Art Centre in Gravesend.

In my February blog I wrote about a brooch I made as my entry for this exhibition. I was thrilled that my piece Elpis (Hope) Brooch was selected as one of the 60 participants for this show and decided to travel to the opening day with my family.

Prior to the exhibitions, all entries were beautifully photographed by Simon B Armitt for the printed catalogue that was produced and the show was curated and displayed by the ACJ team, notably Exhibition Manager Joanne Haywood and ACJ Director, Terry Hunt.

Each entry came with a statement that explained the thoughts behind the piece. This statement was not shown next to the cabinets so as to encourage your own thoughts when viewing the pieces, but they were printed in the catalogue.

As the pandemic prevented many such physical shows from being organised it was a real pleasure to take part in the opening day and meet and catch up with old friends.

I wanted to use my May Blog to write about some of my own favourites of this exhibition:

All selected pieces were sorted into broad categories to make the display easier and these were:

1. Social Justice and Societal Change – A fairer world for all, technology, consumerism and conflict

2. Supernature – Celebrating the wonder of the natural world

3. Tributes and personal narratives – For our heroes and loved ones, personal reflection and biographical pieces

4. Our beautiful planet – Climate change, conservation, sustainability, ecology and animal rights.

5. Coronavirus (Covid-19) – Personal reflections and global impacts.

6. Love, hope and faith – Humanity, lore, talismans and amulets.

I was very moved by the different approaches of the makers to the theme of the exhibition and the thoughts behind the pieces when reading the catalogue. I will choose one piece from each section:

1. Social Justice and Societal Change – Z(eros) No Ones by Emma McGilchrist. I had the pleasure of meeting Emma at the opening and we chatted about our respective pieces in the exhibition and our thoughts behind it. I love the different layers of meaning behind this brooch, especially the one challenging Freud’s interpretation of women as Zero “a gap, absence of maleness and therefore lesser being.”

*Z(eros) No Ones* brooch by Emma McGilchrist

2. Supernature – City Garden Brooch by Sophie Martin-Glinel. Sophie’s brooch is a beautiful interpretation of her urban surroundings. She notices the beauty present even in her built-up, often industrial surroundings where one would not often suspect nature to be. Sophie notices that, and her brooch signifies how nature finds ways to fight its way through the most challenging elements of urbans landscapes.

3. Tributes and personal narratives – This section of the exhibition was particularly touching and it was hard to pick just one entry. So I picked two – both moving tributes to lost loved-ones.

a. Jane Sedgwick’s brooch Forget-Me-(K)not pays tribute to the skills passed on from mother to daughter and she uses threads from of her late mother’s sewing box to make her piece. Incorporating the threads her mother touched and worked with is a particularly moving memento – significant perhaps especially to a fellow maker, for whom materials and touch are important elements to how we live, view and interpret the world.

*Forget-Me-(K)not* brooch by Jane Sedgwick

b. Anne Walker’s brooch Fragility of Life: Dear Tam – This brooch is a beautiful tribute to the recently deceased Tamizan Savill, long-time member and Chief Executive of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery. The brooch is Anne’s final farewell letter to Tamizan. It is composed of long pieces of printed paper strips “with a jumble of messages and mixed emotions” which are loosely laced together and – like paper – signify the fragility of life.

*Fragility of Life: Dear Tam* brooch by Anne Walker

4. Our beautiful planet – Before it’s too Late Brooch by Sarah Jane Wilmott: Sarah’s brooch is a call to action to remind ourselves that so much more still needs to be achieved to tackle climate change. The brooch is made from charcoal and fine silver, with the charcoal leaving a mark on the wearer – just like human action has had on the planet. A beautifully evocative piece that should all make us think and renew our commitment to preserve and protect our planet.

5. Coronavirus (Covid-19) – Lonely Fish brooch by Mandy Nash: Mandy’s brooch resonated strongly with me. The impact of the pandemic on children and young people was particularly strong and are still felt. The absence of social contact with friends, the known rhythm of life and school and a certain predictability were hard to cope with. Although speaking to the children about these things, adults struggled with them too. Anxieties remained and – as depicted in the brooch – children and adults still appear on the outside as ‘jolly fish’ but are in fact “struggling to keep the head above water” and feel like they are “swimming against the tide.”

6. Love, hope and faith – All You Need Is Love brooch by Joanne Haywood. My own brooch also came in this category, but one brooch I particularly liked was Jo’s. The warmth and compassion of her thoughts really stirred me. To respond with kindness, compassion and understanding to other people in need and especially in such turbulent times as the last few years, not only helps others, but also lifts our own spirits and adds meaning to our own lives. The use of her materials, colour and symbolisms underlines the above.

As part of the main exhibition, exhibitors were also asked to send in samples or test pieces they had made for their brooches. This was to enable especially visually impaired persons to experience the exhibition. This was a particularly lovely part of the exhibition. As the actual brooches were shown in glass cabinets it was fantastic to be able to touch and feel the materials and textures used in the pieces.

If you are able to go I would encourage you to see the exhibition and/or buy the catalogue to read the thoughts behind each piece. The following are the tour dates and locations:

• 30th April 2022 – 29th May 2022: St Georges Arts Centre - Gravesham Borough Council - in partnership with LV21

• 1st -3rd July 2022: Exeter University – Conference Pop-Up exhibition

• 19th September - 28th October 2022: Vittoria Street Gallery – Birmingham School of Jewellery

• 16th November – 21st Dec 2022: Mission Gallery in partnership with Swansea College of Art UWTSD

• 9th January – 24th February 2023: Goldsmiths Centre, London

• 4th April – 18th June 2023: New Brewery Arts, Cirencester

exhibition, DesignHendrike Barz-Meltzer30 May 2022exhibition, ACJ, Meanings and Messages, Brooches, BroochComment