‘WHAT ONCE WAS THERE’

Two finger ring. 

Blackened, drilled silver hollow form with pressed dust moving leaves. To be displayed or worn- definitely to be played with!

This is a one-off piece. Conjuring a shipwreck with seaweed colonies rippling in the underwater currents. The empty drilled holes a sign of the lost, a site for ‘new’ growth.  If carefully balanced the ring can also rock back & forth, evoking the passage of time. 

‘Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was’ Jeanette Winterson

When working at the bench the dust from each process- cutting, filing, sanding & polishing - falls into the bench skin. This is standard workshop equipment, a kind of leather hammock, that is fitted under the bench to catch off-cuts & general bench sweepings. I gather this dust & melt it down. Non-metal specks burn off during the heating process leaving a ball of newly formed metal. Each ball is then pressed flat by hammering. My dust contains both silver & brass in varying proportions hence the range of colours between each pressed ball. 

In this way the life of one of my pieces becomes incorporated into the next just as the making process of this next piece is gathered & formed into the next & so on, generationally. 

The movement of each pressed dust leaf is suggestive of the unending cycle of things. 

Blackened silver box with silver, brass, and silver mixed with brass pins.

55mm x 25mm x 34 to 47mm due to moving pins.