Inspired by history - researching and Designing a cohesive jewellery collection: a jeweller case study
Blog
At the end of the year, students on the Diploma in Fine Jewellery with Jewellers Academy design and make a Final Project to showcase the skills they’ve learnt in the course. The brief is open to ensure they can bring their own style and creativity, with the students tasked to create three pieces that form a cohesive collection. Students also provide a summary for their mentor explaining their inspiration, how they developed the design and the techniques involved.
In this blog post takeover, Diploma Graduate Zoe Emmett shares her process and inspiration in creating her three-piece collection.
Image by Karen Young Photography
Final Project
I have never been one for making my life easier and the final project of the Fine Jewellery Diploma was no different.
When I realised that there was going to be a final project to design and craft a collection of 3 cohesive pieces my mind immediately went to my first love and that was History. I spent 20 years teaching History and Classics and during that time I developed an interest in the craft and jewellery of pre-Roman Britain and so I couldn’t resist building a project inspired by this period of history, especially as I would be able to do it with the professional insight and guidance of my mentor, Michael Milloy.
I first became enthralled by pre-Roman and Roman arts and crafts, in particular jewellery, when I began teaching a module on it to my A Level Classics classes. I had always been a post-1750 historian and had never really taught ancient history and so I had to do quite a bit of research. I started reading and came across a picture of the Snettisham Hoard which was a large collection of Celtic-style torcs and other pieces made of precious metal that was discovered in Norfolk between 1948 and 1973. In particular, I was fascinated by the Great Torc which is now housed at the British Museum in London.
Actually, fascination is probably an understatement, because I was absolutely captivated by it and staggered by the level of skill and workmanship that is demonstrated. It consists of 64 individual wires twisted in 8 sets of 8 and held by ornately cast terminals. The precision and fine detail evidenced in this piece made it almost impossible to believe that it was made over 2000 years ago and had possibly been buried in the ground since 50BCE. The question for me was: “How?”
It was a question that I asked myself time and time again when I came across new examples of archaeological finds that challenged the Roman depiction of the native Britons as “barbarians”. It didn’t fit for me that a whole nation of people who produced such intricate and beautiful crafts could be “barbarians” and I wanted to understand how they went about creating pieces that would challenge any professional jeweller today and achieve it without all the modern tools and machinery, we have at our disposal.
It was a question that had stayed with me for a long time and so, finally, I had the opportunity to maybe get a small insight into the processes used. The only problem was that the diploma was a Fine Jewellery Diploma and not an Experimental Archaeology one. My challenge was, how do I go about creating fine pieces of jewellery whilst also getting as close as possible to the techniques of our ancient ancestors?
If you ask Google the question: “what is the definition of fine jewellery?”, it immediately becomes apparent that there is no singular definition but there is a general agreement that it is about the quality of the materials used and the level of craftmanship in the finish of the piece. The Snettisham Great Torc, along with many archaeological finds from the pre-Roman period, were indeed made from gold and silver alloys and therefore fitted the bill in terms of the quality of the materials used and there is no debate about the level of skill involved in their making. From my research, also, torcs such as the Great Torc were likely to be ceremonial and worn by those with the highest status in pre-Roman society. They would have reflected the importance of that person, most likely a warrior, and therefore I felt that, just as fine pieces of jewellery today convey the status of an individual, the torcs did the same. So I had enough evidence to know that if I based my final project on pre-Roman torcs that I was in fact basing my work on fine jewellery of the past and I liked the idea that I could explore what represented fine jewellery from a different period of history.
The Plan
The central piece of my collection was going to be a neck torc, not on the scale of the Great Torc, but a more simple design that involved up to 6 twisted wires and simple hammered terminals. This would be made out of recycled silver that I would melt down and form into the wire myself. The accompanying pieces would be an arm torc/ bracelet, made using the same techniques and a brooch similar to the ones that have been found all over Britain that would have been used to hold up robes as clothing. When I spoke to Michael about my idea, he was really encouraging and seemed genuinely interested in what I wanted to achieve. He gave me some great pointers to think about in my design and I felt bolstered by his feedback. Maybe, my idea wasn’t as unachievable as I feared it might be.
The Process
I engaged in research directly with the British Museum and the Society of Jewellery Historians and the replies that I got were really helpful, giving me an insight into the methods that may have been used and also pointing me in the direction of further reading. This type of professional feedback was essential, because it gave me jumping points from which to start my processes and enlightened me in the absolutely genius methods they believe ancient jewellers used. For example, the Great Torc wires are not solid, they are hollow tubes that were probably formed by hammering sheets of metal to a very thin grade and then passing them through a hole in a stone or piece of metal (a method that the ancient Egyptians used as well). This would force the sheets to form a hollow tube, making the piece lighter to wear and allowing for uniformity of the metal. The Great Torc still weighs about 1kg but each of it’s wires measure about 1.9mm which gives the piece an impressive uniformity in the twist.
I did try this method of forming tubes of wire but it just didn’t work for me. It may have been that the recycled silver just wasn’t good enough to be hammered to such a thin level and then be formed into a tube. I had the added issue of not having a smooth stone through which to pass the metal and so I used my draw plate which kept cutting into the metal as it passed through. I managed to make about 3cm of tube wire but it just kept breaking and so I had to abandon that idea.
So my chosen method of forming my wires was good old hammering into shape. Ideally an anvil would have been purchased but my budget did not stretch that far and so I sourced a cobbler’s last and that became my anvil replacement. I also purchased quite a few different hammers because I wasn’t sure what weight would be needed to hammer the silver in to wires. I melted my pre weighed recycled silver into short ingots to begin with but I found that I couldn’t hold the metal very well whilst hammering without a distinct possibility of hammering my fingers as well and so it was taking a very long time to form anything resembling wire from them.
The solution? Charcoal blocks. I do have a metal ingot mould but I was finding that it was taking a huge amount of time and gas to get it up to heat enough to form a long enough ingot of silver to them hammer. So I cut a trough in my charcoal block which got my ingots (with a bit of manipulation of molten silver) relatively slim and to about 20cm to start with. Ordinarily I would have worried about how irregular the shape of these ingots were but given that I was going to hammer them into wire, the irregularity didn’t matter.
Hammering the wires was by no means easy and it was physically difficult. I was advised to not quench the silver after annealing but to let it cool, so that it had the best level of malleability and this did turn out to be the best method. The further into the project I got, the better I got at judging when to anneal and how far the metal could be taken. I also became quite proficient at hammering and it became an almost meditative task (a noisy one) and was very rewarding when you see the metal forming into a wire. I also found that as the ingots were roughly square shaped, I initially hammered them into square wire, which I wasn’t expecting. Once I had got them almost to the length that I wanted them at, I would then rotate the wire whilst hammering so that I could achieve a more rounded shape.
I found that I was most comfortable sitting on the floor to hammer but I wished that I had fixed the cobbler’s last to the floor because there was a lot of bounce on it as I hammered which probably made the process a little slower. If I were to do more of this technique I would invest in an anvil.
My first set of wires were quite thin and so I used them to create the bracelet shape. Once I had 5 wires I held them together with binding wire and began the twist. It was a difficult process to get the twist tight enough without fracturing the wires. With them being made from recycled silver the wires were prone to fracturing and so the twist on the wire is not as tight or even as I would have liked them to be. When working with the longer, thicker wires for the large torc the same issued occurred with one wire fracturing quite significantly. I was faced with a dilemma: “do I undo the twist and replace the wire or do I allow the fracture to become part of the piece?”. I decided to keep the fracture within the twist because it was part of the process of making and I wanted to keep a certain level of process on show.
In modern jewellery we do everything we can to hide the process, we polish and preen a piece until it becomes “perfect” but what I was growing to love about this project was that it bore the scars of how it came into existence. That is why I didn’t want to simply make a torc using machine made wire and perfect sheets of silver, yes the finish would be of a much higher standard, but with this piece, there are marks evident all over it that are marks of me and my work and that is something that is very grounding.
Once I formed the wire into the final shape of the torcs I absolutely fell in love with the weight and texture of them. I can see why these pieces of jewellery were worn by warriors, there is a strength to them and the weight (large torc weighs 100g) sitting round the neck would have represented their strength. It has been written that the Celts (European) did in fact go into battle naked, except for body paint and a torc. Perhaps the torc was a symbol of strength and protection?
The body of the brooch and the terminals of the torc and bracelet were made by hammering silver into as flat a piece of silver sheet as possible. This gave the silver a lovely texture and so I decided to keep a hammered look to them – it also helped hide any solder connections!
Solder? Surely that is not historically accurate! Well, in fact there is evidence that has been found that something similar to solder was being used in Iron Age Britain which was a massive relief because I was not convinced that could cast the terminals onto the end of the torcs with any great success. The designs of the terminals and the brooch were not exactly as I had hoped they would be, they turned out a little plain and simple.
The brooch, I wanted to represent water and so I wanted the silver to wrap around the central twist in a more fluid way. The design inspiration behind this was that water was so important to the pre Roman Britons, quite often offerings were found in water springs that were considered spiritual places. Springs such as that found in Bath were important to the Britons before the Roman occupation as a holy/ spiritual place and the Romans conflated their own religion with the beliefs of the Britons and built a temple to the conflated goddesses Sulis and Minerva along with public baths which were an important gathering place for Roman society. Unfortunately I hadn’t allowed enough time to really refine the brooch and so it is a much more crude than I would have liked it to be. It is my intention to remake the brooch when I have the time to do it.
Finishing
Finishing was always going to be a challenge. I tried a number of different suggested techniques including chalk, sand and different types of stones but in the end I settled on a metal burnisher. The finish is not as fine as you might expect from a fine piece of jewellery, but as I mentioned before, I had grown to love the hammer marks and fractures because they represented my connection to the piece. Burnishing did take a long time but again, it became a really mindful exercise.
Reflections
The project represented much more than the final project of my diploma, it represented an opportunity and that is what I would advise anyone to do if taking the diploma. Use the whole course as an opportunity to take your jewellery in the direction you want to go. I had spent 10 years making jewellery to other people’s desires and had put my own interests to one side, telling myself that my ideas were too niche to make a successful business out of and indeed they may still be. I had huge imposter syndrome, never really committing to the jewellery business because I didn’t think that I had the right to be there. However, if it weren’t for the opportunity that the diploma presented me to really follow my interests I may have never had the strength of conviction or the opportunity to take my jewellery in the direction I had always wanted to. Having someone like Michael Milloy as my mentor gave me confidence and also allowed me to ask someone who has such a broad experience if my ideas could work, he was a fabulous support and I enjoyed talking jewellery with him. He was firm but fair with his feedback and I felt that I learned so much from our discussions, I have so much respect for him. He gave me the confidence to take on this project and helped me reflect on my practice as a jeweller and he helped me to finally begin to believe that I am a jeweller with real skill. Don’t get me wrong, I still have imposter syndrome and I still have a lot to learn, but I have emerged from the diploma with more skills, experience and drive than I thought possible. I am now planning 2023 which will be the year when I really pursue my jewellery dreams and develop my historically inspired collections, sticking with using techniques that our jeweller ancestors used and to make jewellery that speaks to who I really am. Who knows….I might even try a bit of blacksmithing!
About Zoe
Hello, I am Zoe and I have been making jewellery for over 10 years. I live in Accrington, Lancashire with my husband, two children and two dogs but I am a Welsh girl through and through. For years jewellery making was my hobby alongside my full time profession in teaching. 3 years ago, I left my job as a headteacher and decided to have a change of pace and pursue my dreams of making and selling jewellery for a living. I set up my business La Vie ZoEm Jewellery in 2020 and since then I have been trying to build a small business in Lancashire. Most of my work to date has been commission based and I have taken a particular interest in melting down old jewellery and making it into something new. 2023 will see the release of my history inspired collections and a new website thanks to the Fine Jewellery Diploma.
Facebook: La Vie ZoEm
Images copyright Zoe Emmett unless stated otherwise
Diploma in
Fine Jewellery
The Diploma in Fine Jewellery is designed to equip you will skills that are not only enjoyable and fulfilling to master but will also help you to create commercial, highly desired fine jewellery. Click the button if you’d like to find out more.
