Another Birmingham institution makes it into double figures this month – Brilliantly Birmingham, the international contemporary jewellery festival, is celebrating its first decade from 21 November to 28 February.

There’ll be two exhibitions at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery:

• FLUX, the annual selling show which attracts international entries from new and emerging designers, and
• A 10th Anniversary Retrospective featuring the work of seven designers whose work has headlined previous festivals (including Mikaela Lyons, a recent MA graduate from BCU’s School of Jewellery)

The programme will also include:

• Paradigma, an international exchange between Birmingham School of Jewellery (BCU) and the Escola Massana, Barcelona
• A series of professional development seminars sponsored by Business Link and the Assay Office, which is also running a special open day for the public
• ‘Walks in the Quarter’ and Open Workshops
• Exhibitions by individual designer makers such as James Newman and Sara Preisler and a collaboration with Birmingham City University’s New Generation Arts 2010

More info on the Brilliantly Birmingham website.

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Kirsty Davies got in touch the other week. I asked for a little bit of information about herself and this is what she said:

After finishing a HND in jewellery and silversmithing I went on to work with a jewellery and manufacturing company within the jewellery quarter for 3 and half years. From there I went onto completing in degree in jewellery design gaining first class honours.

I have now set up a jewellery and accessory company under my name Kirsty Davies.

My aim as a designer is to create items that are inspired but not dictated to by fashion by creating beautifully different pieces.

My products are fresh, fun and exciting and as well as using precious materials, experiment with unconventional materials such as neoprene usually reserved for wetsuits.

An exciting piece I that I’m launching for spring summer is the make it, wear it, love it neoprene jewellery accessory, which is assembled by the consumer and customised as a corsage, necklace, head piece, bag accessory….the list goes on.

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I picked up a flyer for Moda Jewellery the other day – they’ve got a jewellery sale going on at the Bond Cafe in Digbeth tomorrow (Thursday 29 October) from 10am to 2pm.

According to their blog, they were profiled in the Birmingham Mail a couple of months ago, where it was revealed that Julie and Mike, based in Hollywood, set up the company selling jewellery at parties at people’s homes. They’ve now also moved online and into the wedding, gifts and corporate events markets.

Browsing their website, they make the non-too-idle boast that they have:

the biggest selection of beads in Birmingham

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Jewellery Quarter – the newly launched site has a blog which Andy Munro (of the JQ Regeneration Partnership) and David Louis will be contributing to.  David says:

I will also be mentioning other people in the Jewellery Quarter that are blogging about their new products, both new and established businesses that are taking technology and applying it to there own businesses sharing their ideas with all who are interested, there are 4 blogs ongoing from the Jewellery Quarter that I know of and I invite any one in the Jewellery Quarter that is blogging to send me a link and I will do my best to get you a mention here

So far he’s found:

• Design Space 09
• Clare Victoria Pardoe
• Centrepiece; and, of course
• David Louis

I have to thank Clare Victoria Pardoe for using the comments after my previous post to mention:

• Sarah Kelly; and
  
• Tusheeta David

There’s also the Brilliantly Birmingham blog and, not solely dedicated to jewellery, the jewelleryquarterbirmingham.com blog and MyJQ.

Any more I’ve missed? Put a link in the comments and I’ll see about adding them to this list.

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Frost is:

A touring exhibition by Design Space incubates, a council led scheme that gives designer makers workshops facilities and support in setting up their own business

The exhibition includes 18 new designers, each and every one creating exquisite collections

The next dates are:

• 8-14 December – ‘David Louis Project’ at Artfull Expression – 23-24 Warstone Lane, Birmingham, B18 6JQ
• 13-20 December – Open Studios at Design Space – Unit 2, 25-33 Hylton Street, Birmingham, B18 6HJ

There’s a Design Space blog for documenting all this too, which is worth a look.

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It looks like this:

Couple of things:

• the RSS feed for the news is practically invisible and doesn’t work anyway.
• how about giving the students run of the news or an associated blog? There must be so much jewellery-related stuff happening in this city that’s going unreported and that’s as much a shame as it is an opportunity.

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Pogo Jewellery is run by Helen Puxley who studied at:

Birmingham School of Jewellery before being accepted onto Design Space in 2007, a Birmingham City Council initiative encouraging young graduate designers to set up within the Quarter. In August 2008 she did just that and now shares a workshop with fellow makers

It looks like she’ll be exhibiting at a fair few places over the next couple of months too – dates are on her events page.

Shame she’s not blogging about all these intereseting things she’s doing – there don’t seem to be many (any?) of Birmingham’s jewellers doing that just yet.

(Found via Fierce Earth)

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Brilliantly Birmingham is:

showcases the work of local, national and international designer makers through a full programme of exhibitions, workshops and special events. All exhibitions are free of charge and the festival promises to be a fascinating insight into jewellery-making today

will take place at a variety of venues across the city and region from 28th November 2008 – 21st December 2008.

Incidentally, is there anyone regularly blogging (or reporting in any way) about jewellery in Birmingham?  I’ve not spotted anyone on my wanderings and would love to know if I’ve missed someone.

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Another week, another MA show with a pleasingly cheap & cheerful approach to internet promotion.  This time it’s the turn of BCU’s Jewellery, Silversmithing and Related Products MA Show 2008.

This year the emphasis has been on extending the conventional boundaries of jewellery and silversmithing. 48 WEEKS… LATER demonstrates a variety of approaches to the subject area, including installations, animations, laser technologies and explorations of colour and scale.

Join us on the evening Tuesday 9th September 6-8pm at the School of Jewellery, Vittoria Street, Birmingham for the opening of the exhibition where 14 students will showcase their exciting new collections. The exhibition will be on display until the 26th of September.

For further info fun there’s a MySpace page and a Facebook group.

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The money quote: “Although the Quarter has two museums – one of the jewellery, the other celebrating the history of the pen, I’m not sure we’ve got enough to keep the tourists here.”

And if it happens, what will it mean? Less rapacious redevelopment, hopefully but other than that? Um…

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More here. I’ve criminally not reported on BrillBrum much so go download the press pack.

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Brilliantly Birmingham, the annual showcase of contemporary jewelery, runs from now until January 13th with numerous events, exhibitions and fairs across the city.

All the information is in this press kit or you can just download the a PDF of the catalogue.

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Part of the festival is FLUX, a curated exhibition and selling event in the Jewellery Quarter for designer makers. Participation in FLUX is by open submission and panel selection.

Submission details are on the BrilBrum site and have to be in by 21st September. For more details call Prim Currie on 0121 464 1187.

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Now this is either an inspired move to bring art to the masses or it’s something… else. I once worked in the warehouse of a “fine art” company who sold limited edition prints to collectors and was struck by how dull and predictable most of the work was – essentially selling greetings card aesthetics with a high price tag. Nothing wrong with that of course but it showed me how flexible the term fine art is.

But I can’t judge this. For a start I’ve never been to Merry Hill so I’ve no idea what environment this is going to be held in. They promise “an average weekend footfall of 250,000 people” which is pretty impressive assuming they all go past your work and there has been a trend towards holding these sorts of large scale events in shopping centres of late.

The exhibition takes place over the weekend of Feb 9-10th 2008. Exhibition space costs £300 (with a 10% discount if you book before Sep 14th) and they take a 10% discount on sales, which are dealt with completely by them. Sharing space and spreading the cost is also an option. Full details are here along with contact details if you have questions.

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The Designer Makers Handbook is a neat publication put together by Designer Maker West Midlands and Craftspace. It contains a few interviews with practitioners and a whole gamut of contact details across the world and specific to the region. Download the 68 page PDF here.

via Creative Wolverhampton.

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Saturday 14th July form 10am to 4pm. Click on the above for a map (pdf) of where stuff is at.

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Jivan Astfalck’s installation at Moor St Station at first look like hats on stands in a box. Which is what it is. But look closer and each hat has a delicate brooch attached to it the design of which has some connection to the station itself, from the shapes of the beams and windows to a picture of a cat (apparently there’s a community of feral felines living in the disused tracks). And then you notice the cast iron hat stand has the GWR logo on it.

Jivan created the piece by sitting in Moor St watching people move through it. As a German based in London who teaches at BIAD she is not a native Brummie, something she was jokingly apologetic for, but that doesn’t make her reaction to a Birmingham train station any less valid. If anything it makes it more pertinent as the city evolved around travel and trade, from the canals to the motorway network to the airport. People pass through Birmingham as much as they live here.

Jivan was particularly interested in the renovation of the station which attempts to recreate the Victorian style to an almost fanatical degree, from the light fittings to the palm trees, yet cannot help but be fake in places. It also contrasts strongly with the ubiquitous Selfridges building the empty glass cube next to it, like a functional museum exhibit. But above all a building like this is about people and how they use it. Jivan spent time just watching the different types of people, what they looked like and how they behaved as their narratives were framed by the building, which in turn informed her choice of hats and brooch designs.

The exhibition is housed in an wood and glass box in the concourse of the station which, as an original feature, blends into the surroundings until it catches you eye. It’ll be on display until June 29th.

Jivan Astfalck is a Senior Research Fellow at UCE BIAD (this is her staff page) where she directs the Jewellery, Silversmithing and Related Production MA. Her installation is part of the Architectural Jewellery and Conceptual Design strand of New Generation Arts and Architecture Week

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Yesterday I popped along to St Chad’s Cathedral, which is a very interesting building so I’d recommend you follow that link. I was there to meet Sian Hindle, a jewellery designer who was taking part in the Architectural Jewellery and Conceptual Design strand of New Generation Arts and Architecture Week. This project, curated by Susan McNally, gets four designer-makers to work with a building of architectural interest in Birmingham. As well as St Chads there’ll be work in the Central Library, Big Peg in the Jewellery Quarter and Moor St Station.

Sian has produced six birds from a sheet of metal which has been acid etched with a dream story about flight. The birds are then suspended in the air at St Chads – you’ll find them in the far right corner.

Sian graduated from BIAD a couple of years ago and now works in the Jewellery Quarter as a jewellery designer. She can be contacted here.

The show officially starts on Monday 18th and runs to the 29th but if you’re passing you can obviously see Sian’s work right now during cathedral opening hours (8am – 5pm). The other installations are going in over the next few days.

And it goes without saying the cathedral is well worth a visit on its own. Be sure and check out the 15th Century Christ.

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Stalls are available for those interested in selling or demonstrating arts and designer crafts at £10 each. Which is quite cheap really.

More details from Anna Gibson on 0121 464 1191 or 07966 981 695 and anna.m.gibson@birmingham.gov.uk.

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