Cornish-based jeweller Lucy Spink places a high value on nature and its fundamental influence on the human condition. Combining traditional jewellery techniques and thought-provoking contemporary design with the influence of her fine art education, Lucy hopes to draw wearers of work into looking at and engaging more deeply with the landscapes we live in, seeing nature in more detail and with greater awareness and compassion.
Ancient landscapes and lichen forms are Lucy’s core inspiration, creating work that she sees as small sculptures in recycled metals, which can be worn close to the body and carried wherever the wearer goes. Her work shows the marks of process and the beauty of form, reflecting patterns of nature such as outline shapes of rocky outcrops, surface patterns like the textures of stone, and small spurs of silver and gold to replicate the growth patterns of lichens.
Working in sterling silver, Lucy use reticulation and her grandfather’s old workshop tools to give texture to the surface of the works. Her silver is depletion-gilded before the final heat treatment, and as the piece cools, unique forms appear. She also uses 18k gold selectively in her work, to represent the rarity and importance of the natural world we inhabit, and as an allusion to how closely our lives were once bound to its rhythms. Lucy wants each piece she makes to summon the sense of the natural landscape through its tactile surface, elemental forms and precious materials.
