Jane Adam

This is the work of Jane Adam, she creates perforated jewellery as do I but she uses a different technique. Her perforations are quite different from mine as her patterns are very organic and irregular which she calls "counter intuitive" as she has to carefully think about where to place her punches; my patterns are very geometric, symmetrical and repetitve which, after a while creates a meditative effect. What I love about her work is that she makes each piece by hand and each piece is one of a kind.

One of a kind Mandala neckpiece

This is a neckpiece I have been working on in the past few days, frantically trying to finish before my jewellery gets examined for my B Tech portfolio.

I had created a few of these seperate Mandala elements which I was going to make into seperate pendants but I wanted to create a real exhibition 'show piece'.

I had an idea to make something like this and sketched it onto paper. After some thought I decided to go ahead and make this neckpiece which I felt was quite brave as I had a very limited amount of time to make it but I decided to just put my head down and do it. I am really glad that I did make it as I feel the outcome was really successful.

I feel that this piece epitomises my 'One of a kind' theme as each Mandala is different from the next; although some bear the same pattern there are still slight variations.

Handmade punches

These are some of the punches I have made...

To make these I cut long pieces of round tool steel to finger size with a metal saw. I then heat up the tool steel to a bright orange colour and forge it into a taper, when I have the right size or shape taper I forge the rest of the punch square which helps me to place the punch into the correct position. When the punch is square I place two vice grips relatively close to each other and create a twisting design in the middle by heating it and turning the grips in opposite directions. I then take the punch to the belt sander and slowly form the punch into the desired shape. Once this is done all that is left to do is sand, harden and temper the punches and away we go.

Rose window Mandala test piece in silver (first)

This was one of the first test pieces I created, it has been enameled which is what I plan to do to with these Mandalas when they're all ready and completed. I wasn't entirely happy with the punching, I think it may be due to the vast spacing between the punches and I also created this piece before I custom made the punches that I wanted to use specifically for these designs so this piece gave me an idea of the type of punches that I needed to make.

Rose window Mandala test pieces in silver

These are test pieces with different design variations of Rose windows, I have punched them from silver which has a much more successful outcome than than aluminium. There are still more to come as I have many different designs in my head that I still want to create, I am finding the success of these designs to be very exciting and motivating which is giving me many ideas for the jewellery I want to make from them.

Rose windows

These are some beautiful Rose windows from the Chartres and Strasbourg cathedrals, they are some of the windows I have based by designs on.

Rose window Mandala test pieces

These are some test pieces I have been working on, they are based on Rose window patterns. They are not exactly the same as the windows due to the fact that they are punched with different shaped punches which I have custom made specifically for this project. It was difficult working out how to arrange the punches as they are simple shapes such as square, marquise, circle and teardrop, where the rose windows contain complex shapes which would be difficult to shape the punches into, it would have been much easier to pierce out the patterns but I like the 'embossed' effect that punches create.

These photos are of my first aluminium test pieces, I don't really like the way the aluminum looks and reacts to the punching so I have continued by making them in Silver