Alice Fry is a jewellery sculptor at the Sculpture Lounge Holmbridge and talks about her career at 25 years old.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 I'm Alice Fry, we're at the Sculpture Lounge in West Yorkshire near Homeforth, just north of the Peak District.
00:05 And I'm a jeweller and silversmith, so I make silverware and jewellery inspired by crystals, minerals
00:12 and all sorts of wonderful geological inspiration.
00:18 I'm inspired by geology, so from crystals, minerals, geometric shapes,
00:26 the contrast between the geometric lines and the flat surfaces and the organic textures and patterns that nature gives us.
00:34 I use silver primarily and I also feature niobium in my work, so this is similar to titanium.
00:41 So you get these refractory colours which are actually the structural colourisation,
00:46 so they're kind of an optical illusion and you get quite a big range.
00:51 It creates an oxide layer on the surface when you anodise it
00:54 and then these colours are actually quite iridescent, so they sort of play about in the light and dance in the light.
01:01 I'm one of a handful of jewellers in the UK using niobium
01:07 and there's not many people that specialise in anodising, which is the technique to create the colour.
01:13 It's an electrolytic process and I've done a lot of research into it.
01:17 My university at the Glasgow School of Art had a research paper from the 1970s
01:23 which formed a lot of the research for my work and it was used back in the 70s in jewellery,
01:28 but I'm one of the very few remaining people actually using it and one of the only ones in the world really.
01:34 There's not many other jewellers in the world that use niobium.
01:38 It was sort of new in the 60s and 70s in jewellery and there was a lot of research done into it then,
01:45 but because of the really unique and specific ways you can use it,
01:49 so you have to cold work it rather than you can't use a torch on it,
01:52 it means that it wasn't quite so, I just want to say, mainstream.
01:56 I use it in a very specific way, so because my work's inspired by gemstones,
02:03 I'm able to work with it a bit like a gemstone.
02:05 So once I've made the niobium, I then set it in the silver, but it's not that new.
02:13 It's not ancient, but it's not really old either.
02:16 I make beakers, spoons, bowls, that's the sort of silverware side.
02:22 But also boxes, and the boxes pair really nicely with the jewellery,
02:26 so I've made work where the box lid becomes a brooch, a wearable brooch.
02:32 And all my work is quite sculptural, so earrings and brooches are really good ways of wearing art really.
02:40 So I tend to do earrings and brooches that work alongside my silverware.
02:45 So professionally, I have been doing it the last three years.
02:49 I did a four-year course at the Glasgow School of Art, it was silversmithing and jewellery design,
02:54 then a one-year specific course in the countryside called Bishop's Land near Reading,
03:00 and that was for jewellery and silversmithing.
03:02 And then since then, in 2021, I've been making and selling my work at exhibitions
03:08 like at Goldsmiths Fair in London, I've got an online shop as well.
03:12 There is the Goldsmiths Craft and Design Council Awards, which is an annual competition.
03:18 It's run by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths,
03:21 and it's an industry-wide jewellery and silversmithing competition with different categories.
03:28 So I've had a few pieces that have entered over the years that have won several awards,
03:31 so most recently I've got a big piece that's won four awards, a gold, a silver, and two bronzes
03:38 at the Goldsmiths Craft and Design Council Awards.
03:41 I am absolutely ecstatic, because I think I've found my way, really,
03:45 and I feel like I work really innately with metal.
03:48 I seem to be able to work with it without even thinking as well,
03:53 and I think to have industry recognition shows that actually I can do this,
03:58 and I've got to the point where I wanted to be when I set out.
04:01 I am 25, and I basically went straight from school into university,
04:05 and since then I've been working flat out.
04:09 But also the older generation are really amazing and help people like me,
04:13 so I've just completed the South House Silver Workshop Trust Scholarship,
04:18 which is where master silversmiths train people like me.
04:22 So I did four months' worth of work with three different makers, and that was invaluable.
04:29 So even though I'm fairly young, I've had a lot of help from the older generation,
04:34 who are just brilliant. It's like a family.