Free Spirit was my first collection and is still going strong. Over the years I've seen many people interact with the designs. They're firm favourites. I'm always interested to find out how people interpret them. And it's often not what I had in mind when I set off to create the collection...
Image by Good Housekeeping UK via Pinterest
My first design took shape during a taster course of CAD software. I immediately loved it. But producing it from CAD and extending it to a full collection was too expensive for me at that point.
So I turned to the lost wax casting method, and the rest is history.
This is how it started, some 5 years ago.
I'd been admiring the delicate creations made by talented bakers using spun sugar (still admiring them from afar, but that's another story).
I loved the organic shapes, the aethereal quality, the assymetry. What if I could mirror them using metal?
One of the early prototypes produced by casting.
An earlier variant of the large disc necklace.
I've had many conversations with people in the gallery, at fairs and parties about this collection. Some think of bird nests; some of twigs and wood branches; others of spider webs. When I mention spun sugar, I always get an enthusiastic nod :)
I like that fact that it means different things to different people For me, the name is spot on: Free Spirit reflects the unrestrained nature of the design, the asymmetry, the freeform nature. And it gives me permission to interpret it in different ways as I go along.
