What is designing and what do I do?

In the 20-plus years I’ve been making silver jewellery about things in the (mostly) Australian Landscape, we’ve done quite a bit of travelling.  Mike has taken thousands of photos (as have I) and I’ve filled many, many journals with sketches, notes and ideas.
 
There are the obvious things that I’ve seen along the way, that are just begging to be made in silver.  Most of these are flowers, leaves  and the like.
 
Places are more difficult as I’m trying to get the feel of the place.  So I’m juggling colour, texture and shapes in an effort to show my interaction with the place. Most of the time I’m making connections with place through some less definable element.
 
Devil’s Marbles was both the colour of the beads and their texture, reminiscent of the rocks themselves.  Purple Flinders was the shape of the Flinders Ranges themselves and that purple colour of the Salvation Jane (Patterson’s Curse to non-South Australians), while Fan Palm was the shape of the palm leaves allied to the vibrant green colour of the palms.

Some things I’ve never been sure of just what I was thinking when I made them. One that has me still scratching my head is Spider Walk in Karijini National Park, where you have to crawl above a running stream, with feet and hands looking for footholds on either side. 
It was exhilarating to get to the end (without falling into the water), but how to show that in a piece of jewellery?  Sure I can make copper rocks and silver stream but it needed more.  So I played with texturing the copper to give the feel of the rocks.  That was fun, but I’m still not entirely certain where it came from.

Some, like Grain, are more complex.  The rustic looking Tiger Eye with the fracture plane showing was the grain ready to harvest; the four stripey silver pieces were a nod to the ploughed paddocks and the central stone is Golden Rutile quartz, with lines of rutile through the quartz reminiscent of the ears of grain.

High Country Tarn was for a friend’s wedding. He proposed to her above a small lake in Victoria’s High Country.  They took a photo of the place.  So the Labradorite ‘lake’ is surrounded by mountains in the silver bezel, with leaves and trees and other elements of this landscape.

One series of designs that has been close to my heart is MacDonnell Ranges , with the reticulated silver background to the copper wire outlines of the ranges.  Boulders of silver and copper signify the rocks that make up this range that formed the southern boundary of Alice Springs.  We spent seven years living in Alice Springs and I think we saw those beautiful ranges in all their guises, all lights and various facets. Where we lived looked out over the Western side of The Gap and they were a constant part of my day.

When we talk directly with clients we can tell them the story behind the work, expanding on the information on the photo card that accompanies each piece. We often discuss the reason behind the choices I’ve made in developing the work. But there is no opportunity to do this if it is an online sale. This is why we enjoy our time at Yulara so much, and continue to go to WOMADelaide and the National Folk Festival.