button fIowers info....
This section of the site will display the new work I am doing using the vintage and antique buttons gathered whilst sorting an amazing and rather large
button collection for a friend. I had occassionally come across some fantastic buttons over the years whilst collecting beads, but found them difficult to
use in my jewellery work because of the way I construct it. I had used some occassionally when I could suspend things from them, but always thought
something more could be done with them in an artistic form.
Whilst sorting this amazing collection, I began putting buttons together the way I look at beads. So many beautiful shapes, sizes and colours. In the past
I had made flowers on metal stems incorporating metalwork, mosaic and wirework in a much larger scale, but thought I could do this with the buttons.
Then place them maybe into a framed work as I had been going to do with my large scale jewellery work years earlier. I could incorporate my love of
painted patterning onto the vases in flat dimension and then do patterning or other views behind them. The use of cardboard and paper to create these
frames gives them a soft edge I don't think could be achieved in any other medium and a malleability that allows you to do almost anything whilst being
strong and light weight.
I will incorporate not only buttons and wire into these pieces but also old furs, embroideries, gemstones for stamen, little bones and vertabrae. Anything
I can find that inspires me, much as I do with my jewellery.
The button flower stems will also be shown free standing in vases, flowers that never die only require a light dusting from time to time!
I had called my business Jewel Garden to put my production jewellery work under as I have always loved gardening and flowers and their motifs found
their way into my jewellery work in many forms. Painting them in stylised version onto my beads, using antique and vintage broaches with flowers and
bugs in them and glass work by other artists (not my medium) and of course being inspired by their myriad colours. Now the flowers have become a little
more literal.
