I’ve been making jewelry in fiber techniques for more than thirty years now.
It was my maternal grandmother who first introduced me to knitting. The memory is rich with detail- the sculpted texture of the carpeting, the deep indigo-blue of the yarn, and the absolute comfort in my relationship with my grandmother. Her attention made me loved, and may have set the course for my future.
As an art student in college so many years later, I strove to make art about something. Family relationships inspired a lot of my creative output, so I thought long and hard about how to bring that inspiration into my metalsmithing.
I didn’t want to make pictorial designs; I wanted something that referenced important people in my life, but quietly. I have always been drawn to art that reveals and conceals equally.
At first, I tried diligently to reproduce my grandmother’s knit stitches in copper wire. The attempt did not yield much fruit. The wire was too thick, the loop-in-loop stitches required more manipulation than my wire could take before kinking into an unattractive knot or breaking completely. Even if I could keep the stitches from fatiguing the metal, the resulting metal “fabric” was lumpy and misshapen. Despite my grandmother’s teaching, I could not knit the wire into something beautiful.
I moved on, this time trying to weave in silver, manipulating thin strips over and under each other. This surface was attractive and yielded flat sheets of material I could design into objects like flat earrings, hoop earrings, and circular rings. On the downside, the sheets were quite time-consuming to create. I struggled to keep the fine metal strips in place at right angles to each other. Later, as the sheets got bigger, I found them difficult to solder successfully. But most importantly, these simple woven sheets, while beautiful, felt a little bit sterile.
I hit a turning point. Pausing my experiments, I began to take note of surfaces that appealed to me, and what line qualities, textures, and materials moved my soul. I found a through-line: I liked rich textures that showed the use of the human hand, but I needed them to display a refinement as well- something that looked deliberate and artful, not messy or indiscriminate. Frustrated with the Goldilocks and the Three Bears results of my experiments (one is too fat, the other too thin…) I chose to let go until the answer presented itself.
And then, one day, it did.
When I first left for college, I had taken my grandmother’s old sewing box with me. Filled with cards of hand-sewing needles, precise metal scissors, and colorful silk thread, it was a bonanza of artistic possibility. Among its treasures was a sturdy metal crochet hook.
The tool was unassuming, to say the least. Simple, steel, a small hook on one end. But the moment I saw it, I knew it was meant for me. As luck would have it (or was it Fate?) next to me on the coffee table was a small spool of silver wire. Reverently, I withdrew the crochet tool from the box. Within moments, I began to crochet. The feel of that crochet hook in my fingers felt just like that moment on the stairs with Grandma. I was home.
The next day in the Metals Studio, I began constructing small sculptures with a traditional jeweler’s torch. Onto these, I crocheted the fine silver, creating my first pieces using this technique, one I use every day. It was as though my grandmother were whispering directly into my ear.
That’s how I started on my path to Uncommon Threads Jewelry.
Nowadays, many of my best-selling pieces, like the Nest Earrings- petite, everyday earrings featuring three lustrous pearls- serve to remind me of how I got here. I also use the crochet technique in some of my newer pieces, like the Lantern Earrings and the Patchwork Cuff, in exactly the same way I began that day in the studio. In pieces like these, you can see that the function of the underlying structure has transformed from one of necessary support into one of distinctive design.
Family relationships are powerful to all of us. I feel so fortunate to have had my lovely grandmother instill in me the spark of creativity that inspires my journey every day.
-xo
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