recycled junk jewellery: tower hamlets safety glass earrings

June 1st, 2008 · No Comments · art, portfolio

I’ve just started doing evening classes once a week in silversmithing and jewellery making at the community college in Bethnal Green, just for fun.

I plan to make a series of 13 pieces of jewellery – one representing each Inner City Borough of London, using items I find on the floor in each Borough.

The first piece is these Sterling Silver earrings made from chips of car glass from an accident next to a bus stop on Grove Road, Bow, Tower Hamlets, London.

It was my first time trying to use silver wire like this. I was hungover as hell, and they took about 2 hours to make, but if I did them again, it would would take much less time. Pretty pleased with the result, the safety glass really blings well – much brighter than I thought it would be.

These ones aren’t for sale, but I could make a new pair if you want, or even something different. Any ideas for the next pieces also welcome.

PS
I found the silversmithing course via the Tower Hamlets Learning Ladder scheme which is brilliant, has a range of courses in all kinds of different stuff, from cooking to languages, and cheap too – a 10 week course is £85, compared to fees of £400+ for doing it at a name like St Martins.

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my scrapbook (tumblr)

Oddyseus's bed

After Oddyseus finally comes home after 19 years and kills all the bad guys, his wife Penelope still won’t let herself believe it’s him. In her final ‘test’ she asks someone to move his bed outside the room, to which Oddyseus retorts:

“Wife, I am much displeased at what you have just been saying. Who has been taking my bed from the place in which I left it? He must have found it a hard task, no matter how skilled a workman he was, unless some god came and helped him to shift it. There is no man living, however strong and in his prime, who could move it from its place, for it is a marvellous curiosity which I made with my very own hands. There was a young olive growing within the precincts of the house, in full vigour, and about as thick as a bearing-post. I built my room round this with strong walls of stone and a roof to cover them, and I made the doors strong and well-fitting. Then I cut off the top boughs of the olive tree and left the stump standing. This I dressed roughly from the root upwards and then worked with carpenter’s tools well and skilfully, straightening my work by drawing a line on the wood, and making it into a bed-prop. I then bored a hole down the middle, and made it the centre-post of my bed, at which I worked till I had finished it, inlaying it with gold and silver; after this I stretched a hide of crimson leather from one side of it to the other. So you see I know all about it, and I desire to learn whether it is still there, or whether any one has been removing it by cutting down the olive tree at its roots.”

Pretty sick bed! One day I will build a bed like this.

10/06/11

amanda wachob tattoo artist.

06/23/11