BSOE x Galeri Showcase
S/A 2023
The British Society of Enamellers brought together twenty-four of its members to showcase their enamelling at Galeri, Caernarfon, running from 9 September-14 October 2023. Work included jewellery, wall panels, vessels, and sculpture.
Images from the Private Viewing on 9 September, 2023
Participating Members
Maureen Carswell
This piece is an example of my innovative technique of forming very thin copper into sculptural shapes. The inner surface is fired using a blow torch the reverse being kiln fired.
Linda makes enamels and jewellery inspired by stories, memories and dreams. Her passion for enamelling stems from her love of colour and the endless possibilities as one enamel colour is combined with another. Blending and shading different enamels to build up veils of colour in order to convey mood and feeling never fails to provoke a sense of excitement and anticipation, as no two pieces are ever completely identical. Each piece evolves over a succession of rings, typically anything from six to a dozen or more although each one only lasts a minute or two.
Based in North Wales, Bethan Corin makes from her home studio. She finds importance in the method of making, the details of things handmade, right down to the practical mechanical aspects of a clasp or a pin. The form, the texture, the feel of a piece is what leads Bethan’s designs, predominately produced in silver, occasionally incorporating enamel and pearls. Enjoying the endless opportunities for experimentation available with enamelling, Bethan creates wearable pieces full of contradiction. Enamel, alternating between perfectly smooth glossy finishes, emulating manufactured enamelware, and beautifully matte or textured surfaces. Restricted colour palettes applied in a painterly fashion against forms of a linear nature with strikingly clean lines. Bethan consciously sources recycled materials as locally as possible, seeking to have as little impact environmentally as possible. Her ambition is to create unique jewellery that integrates and enhances the wearers own style, achieving the simplicity to be worn effortlessly everyday.
Belinda Coyne
My current work is inspired by ancient geological landscapes and the hidden traces of ancestral life. Referring to ordnance survey maps and physically walking the landscape, I trace and record tumuli, dew ponds, paths, river beds and other evidence of past life.
Through the medium of steel and kiln fired vitreous enamel I layer diagrammatic notation with a poetic, visceral response producing folding pocket maps, rulers, measuring sticks and wall panels. I don’t try to represent the landscape, rather foster a sense of placement within space through my use of materials and mark making.
I am interested in creating work that engages with a wider audience and explores the communicative potential of Craft whilst also investigating the challenges of working at (for enamel) a relatively large scale.
Heather Croft
I love bowls. I fire the base in the kiln and paint them being inspired by nature, people I meet and a paintbox of colours. An amazing Azure Blue or a Oak Green will make me feel good and that's what I want people to feel when they see my bowls - to feel good.
I am recently retired and discovered the world of enamelling recently and feel I have just found my true vocation. It's a wonderful world full of experimenting and learning. One can never get tired from enamelling as it frustrates and delights you every time.
It's a joy to be a part of this heritage craft and I love sharing this skill with others.
I have been enamelling for over 20 years. I have explored a great range of techniques and materials to settle on my painterly style.
Silke Espinet
Silke is an enameller and jeweller who graduated for London Metropolitan University in 2012. Her love for the wonderful colours of the natural world led her on her enamelling journey. Silke is a multi-media artist passionate about the environment, and the protection and preservation of wild animals and insects. Her jewellery is made of enamelled pieces in copper, silver, or electroformed organic materials in copper. Often the enamelled pieces are combined with precious and semiprecious stones. The resulting pieces of jewellery are eye catching one-off elaborate works of art. Silke also makes some of her enamelled bowls from copper, or enamels spun copper bowls. Her fascination with colours, crystals, stones and metal informs her pieces.
Beate Gegenwart is a maker and curator who lives and works on the Gower Peninsular near Swansea in the United Kingdom. Originally from Germany, she studied at the University of Wales, Cardiff, and the University of the West of England, completing two Master degrees. Drawing, mark-making, the explicit connections between material, process and maker as well as an emphasis on concept and idea are all central to her practice as an artist.
The bowl has become an important vehicle for me to express stored thoughts, writing and feelings. These bowls speak of movement, absence and rhythms. The insides are inscribed with fine lines and they have a matt, abraded surface; the outsides are a beautiful, rich, glassy black.
The three vessels on display have been made by a human and are inanimate objects whilst displaying gestural qualities that can create feelings from warmth to concern. We, as humans, have a drive to project human qualities, characteristics and behaviours on to non-humans, be they animals, inanimate objects or intangible concepts. As AI, Artificial Intelligence, becomes more embedded into human society the dividing lines between human/non-human are becoming more blurred.
Olga Komisarova
Dreams of peace and tranquility. Dreams of blue, cloudless skies, and bombs will never fall from there again. Dreams of golden wheat fields, where mines will no longer be hidden, where there will be no more bloody battles and people dying.
BSOE note: Olga lives in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Navah Langmeyer creates artwork with the colors, textures, and structures of enamels and cold connections, experimenting with techniques and methods in her minimal home studio. She’s inspired by her mathematical background, her love for water and plants, and wandering around her home town (wherever that may be). She regularly incorporates modularity and movement into pieces, and thinks of jewelry as sculpture for both body adornment and display.
I am a jeweller and enameller based in the Chiltern hills. My work invites the viewer to take a closer look at commonplace objects and often features botanical and geological subjects. I sometimes include microscopy as a visual contrast and enjoy this play with textures and shapes. I work primarily on sterling silver and use soft shades and colour blending with precise application of enamel to illustrate my subjects. Most of my pieces have a pared back, quiet aesthetic.
Sally recently received a Developing Professional Practice grant from the Arts Council. The grant was awarded to her to train in an alternative material to aluminium. Loving colour and metal Sally decided to learn how to enamel and took the opportunity to participate in enamelling techniques courses with Jessica Turrell and a series of one to one sessions with Jane Short in her Brighton studio. Sally is inspired by the colours in nature and particularly flowers where the colours blend into one another. She is currently experimenting with sifting two tone enamelled powders onto fluxes to create colourful glossy surfaces with a shimmer of copper, turned gold by the flux, peeking through the layers of colour. The jewellery shapes are round yet have some angular edges and the colours are changed around on the reverse side. For the necklaces a chain of silver wire is soldered to echo the solid shapes and hammered for a textured finish. Some of the collection will incorporate semi precious beads in colours that compliment the enamel surfaces.
I work mainly on sheet copper , single or linked panels , freestanding or wall hung. Themes are chosen for their potential to exploit colour and texture. Imagery is derived from observation of natural or man-made forms found in landscape or architecture.
This series of eleven barns on the theme ‘Corrugations’ has been developed from painted studies of - mainly - farm buildings from sites in Britain and abroad whose surfaces show evidence of ageing , weathering and distressing. Some high firing was undertaken but this had to be done carefully in order not to lose some colour - red , orange , yellow , which can be lost at high temperatures .
Susan Mannion
I am passionate about enameling and printmaking, in particular, the specialism of vitreous enamel on copper and wood engraving. I am influenced by landscape and patterns in nature, fascinated by the meeting point or transition from one form to another, where water meets the shore or when hard architectural shapes are reflected on the soft forms of water in a river or lake surface. My work evolves from observed detail captured by sketching then laying down the image onto the vessel or copper plate surface creating intricate thread-like lines and fine textural incisions to create an atmospheric, surreal aesthetic, distilling a sense of place, time and memory.
Sheila McDonald
I use many traditional silversmithing and jewellery skills to make my work. The pieces sometimes include areas of engraving and carving of the metal to create recesses for the enamel. Working with transparent enamel allows me to add colour to my work. By adding layers of fine gold and silver foil in the enamel I can achieve a certain depth of colour and shimmer which I couldn’t achieve in any other medium.
Jane’s inspiration comes from the simple silhouettes of traditional Japanese aesthetics often embellished with tiny, oral motifs. Ideas begin as drawings in her sketch book, where they can evolve unconstrained by the limitations of the process. Only when she arrives at a pleasing image does she begin to consider whether it is technically possible. While enamelling and silversmithing are rooted in traditional techniques Jane also embraces more modern, industrial methods, such as photo etching, laser cutting, or the application of fine enamel transfers.
Enamel links ancient history and my childhood with the here and now. There is an agelessness to the colour and materials of copper and glass fused in the heated furnace of the kiln and time.
My art represents a maturing emotional relationship with the subjects of my external and internal environments with which I'm continually encountering, in part, I am growing by rediscovering my child, learning by mistakes and play.
My jewellery is inspired by microscopic images, drawing on the vibrant colours and forms within them. I am intrigued by the revelation of detail when viewing something so closely. My love of colour is translated with vibrant vitreous enamels, experimenting with surface and pattern to make bold and elegant jewellery pieces. I work predominantly with silver and enamels, incorporating precious or semi-precious stones, gold or other materials on occasion. I see my jewellery pieces as a continuing exploration of colour and form; I make pieces that are designed to be loved and worn yet take a small step from the conventional.
Suzi Sinfield
Drawing inspiration from my love of nature, colours within the natural world, and my magpie instinct of loving all things shiny, I have created a collection of decorative vessels. The original theme was that of bugs and insects and this current collection seeks to encapsulate decomposition in nature and the combination of strength, delicacy and beauty within this. The mesh pieces establish this fragility, and through the use of the raku technique on enamel, i have been able to achieve the iridescence seen in natural forms and insects.
Each form starts as a copper sheet or mesh, which I hand form around a stake to achieve the organic folded appearance. Some vessels are further enhanced with the use of electroformed copper mesh, the juxtaposition of these elements together enhances the aspect of life gradually decaying.
From her 200-year-old nail-makers cottage in the West Midlands, Charlotte carries on a long-standing local tradition of women making from home, except rather than forging iron, Charlotte transforms precious metal into her unique, award-winning, enamelled jewels.
Each richly textured piece comes together slowly, every element hand crafted using traditional and ancient techniques. The silver surfaces are engraved by hand by Charlotte, to catch the light, before ring them multiple times in a kiln at up to one thousand degrees centigrade to produce a shimmering transparent colour.
Making, for Charlotte, is a revolutionary act in a fast-paced world, forcing her to slow down to carefully consider every mark made on the metal and grain of enamel laid.
I come from a Fine Art/Painting background but have been fascinated by enamelling since i was a very young child watching my grandmother and aunt create enamel panels and bowls. Working in a precise and carefully measured way i investigate ideas around the concept of loss and change in weather, nature, landscape and environment.
Using my garden, the nearby nature reserve and the local coastline i have drawn my inspiration for these 4 pieces (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) from grass stems, flowers, seed heads, and long walks in varying weather conditions throughout the year. My aim was to create flat, painterly panels which echo the natural forms found here on the South Kent coastline. I hope, through my work, to draw peoples attention to the marginal, the small, the easily overlooked, in an attempt to re-connect people with nature and the landscape around them.
Kathryn Willis is based in Monmouthshire where she creates contemporary kiln fired enamelled jewellery and panels. A love of colour and pattern lead her to work with vitreous enamel a perfect medium for introducing beautiful colour and texture to metal. Kathryn draws inspiration from the Welsh landscape and textile heritage, repetition and nature. She explores a variety of enamel applications such as sifting, stencils, liquid enamel, printing and painting.
Emma is fascinated by enamel, the alchemy of it, how it bonds to the metal, how it reacts in the kiln and how the colours react with each other, and it is the main focus of her practice. She creates hand raised forms in fine silver with enamel, and silver and enamel jewellery exploring shapes inspired by pebbles which when held in the palm are tactile and comforting. The seascapes of Scotland inspire her enamel designs which first begin as watercolour paintings which she abstracts and refines until they evoke a feeling of place, a glimpsed memory or moment in time. In essence the work is all about memory, recalling the waves or the huge skies, the feeling of holding a pebble in the palm, capturing the essence of the landscape and seascape in an abstract and sensory way, trying to evoke the feeling of the landscape without reproducing it exactly. The pieces are created using techniques which recreate the textures of pebbles and rocks, the enamel can either feel like the glossy interior of a shell, or a pebble smoothed by the waves, eroded and faded over time.