JANET FITCH
TREND-WATCH
Summer reaches its peak
T
‘‘
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unveils three
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Fall/Winter17
this month
‘‘
18 JEWELLERY FOCUS
his month if you are based
in, or visiting Edinburgh
for the famous Festival, it’s
worth taking a trip to the Scottish
Gallery, which this year celebrates
175th anniversary of exhibiting
and selling contemporary art,
ceramics and jewellery in the
elegant Georgian building on
Dundas Street, which it has
occupied since 1992.
As part of the special events
planned for this milestone and
during the Edinburgh International
Festival, the gallery has a solo
exhibition of the work of the
eminent jeweller Jacqueline Mina,
who has been and continues to
be an important figure amongst
the gallery’s representation of
contemporary jewellers, having
had her first solo exhibition there
in 1993. The current exhibition,
from 3 August to 2 September is
entitled ‘Jacqueline Mina at 75’,
and celebrates the past and current
development of her beautiful and
innovative work.
A lecturer at the Royal College
of Art, from 1972 to 1994, in
2011 the Worshipful Company of
Goldsmiths held a retrospective
exhibition of her work, Dialogues
in Gold, and in 2012 she was
awarded the OBE. Of her work
she says: “I aim to achieve an
aesthetic result that obscures the
technical rigours of its production.
I am preoccupied with the surfaces
of precious metals, which I
always affect in some way before
construction begins, and with the
play of light, reflection, curve and
line inspired by an abstraction of
Karen Cheng
Annabelle Law
Hannah Lauren Newall
nature and art, and particularly the
human form. I am intrigued too
by random patterns imprisoned
within strictly delineated edges, the
inclusion of chance, and the visual
tension all of that creates.”
As well as older pieces, the show
has most of Mina’s new work from
2016 to 2017, including her latest
Aleatoric Series (the name derives
from aleatoric music meaning
chance music, from the Latin word
alea, meaning dice). “Beginning
with a precise rectilinear piece of
18ct yellow gold, small rectangles
of gold or platinum are joined to
it in a random arrangement, then
repeated rolling presses them into
the surface of the background
while displacing the metal in an
uncontrolled way and creating
an unpredicted and lively outline.
No metal is removed, apart from
smoothing the edges, which
are then burnished with a steel
tool.” The three neck wires of
the necklace on the cover of the
exhibition catalogue illustrate the
ancient technique of Striptwist
which she first saw in a research
project on gold found in a Roman
sarcophagus in Spitalfields.
(www.scottish-gallery.co.uk)
Mina’s work can also be seen
from 9 August until 19 November
in the Cotswolds at the Court Barn
Museum, Chipping Camden. The
10th anniversary exhibition of this
museum is dedicated to continuing
the heritage of architect and
designer CR Ashbee and his Guild
of Handicraft at the turn of the last
century, showing the work of nine
distinguished contemporary craft
August 2017 | jewelleryfocus.co.uk