Created in Birmingham

Au & Ag opens with a preview at Trove on 16 December, showcasing work by Vicky Cull and Justine Moss, in association with Brilliantly Birmingham and Museum of Lost Heritage.

Focusing on gold (Au) and silver (Ag), Cull’s work takes on silver, responding in particular to its ‘noble’ connotations with queens, armoury, medals etc. While Moss works with gold,  creating chandelier sculptures from gold jewellery.

The exhibition will be open by appointment between 13th and 22nd December 2010. For further information, read more on Trove’s website.

Brilliantly Birmingham is kicking off on 27 November, celebrating contemporary jewellery from local, national and international designer makers for the 11th consecutive year, through until 9 January.

With a programme of workshops, special events and free exhibitions, including a ‘Treasure Trail’ of exhibitions at venues across the city, visitors will be taken on a journey of jewellery making, from initial concept to finished product.

This year’s profiled designer is Birmingham City University Graduate Li-Chu Wu whose original paper jewellery was chosen from seven candidates. Her designs consist of a series of one-off wearable paper pieces and body adornments created using a mix of metalsmithing and new technique.

The fifth annual FLUX will also be held throughout the festival, showcasing and selling the work of new and emerging designer makers at mac.

Late-ish notice on this one, but there’ll be some beading workshops in the CiB shop this week, starting tomorrow (Monday 6 April). Here’s the info:

Who is it suitable for?

This is a beginners beading workshop for all ages! There really is no limit on who can attend although a small amount of dexterity with your fingers would be desired as you will have to handle small beads and thread them onto a thin wire. If you have never attempted to make the kind of simple beaded jewellery that you see in the shops and fancy having a go then come along and join in the fun!

What will you make?

You will have the opportunity to design and construct a beaded necklace, earrings or bracelet. All materials will be provided and when when the workshop is complete you may take your crafted jewellery home with you. At the end of the session there is an opportunity to purchase other small jewellery items from the shop.

The Facts!

• Cost: one hour – £5
• Level – Beginners
• Duration of class – 1 hour
• Maximum of 10 people per session
• Workshop Leader: Emelia Wells

Times and dates will be:

• Monday 5 April – 12pm and 1.30pm
• Tuesday 6 April – 1pm and 2.30pm
• Thursday 8 April – 4pm and 5.30pm

Natasha came to Birmingham to study for a degree in fashion design and has been here ever since. She makes:

Wedding tiaras, headbands and bespoke headwear created with inspiration taken from floral silhouettes with small delicate details

There’s more on Natasha Jane’s website and on her Facebook Page.

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.

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.

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

I mentioned a few weeks back that it’d be nice to know of a few people blogging about jewellery in Birmingham. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

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.

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.

There seems to be a few jewellery-related things on at the moment. Brilliantly Birmingham is ongoing until 21 December (although it’s a little hard to tell what’s happening and where from the website) and now there’s a new website for BCU’s School of Jewellery.

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.

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)