Filed under: Gold + Silver | Tags: acrylic, bristle, brush, comb, design, feminine, gold and silver, grandmother, guilding metal, handmade, mirror, modern, mother, soldering, vanity set
Last year as a project I had in mind to create a modern day vanity set. Complete with brush, comb and mirror. It all related back to creating connections with my mother and grandmothers through these iconic feminine objects. The notions of beauty and ritual were thrown around and were the basis of the design.
What I was attempting to do the first time round, was to create the modern day vanity set, for the modern day woman! So it was designed to be compact and functional. Yet this was not achieved. The images that are with this post are what I ended up with. I was really disappointed and frustrated with myself for not being able to complete these objects to what I had initially imagined.
It has been something I am always thinking about. So here we go again.. This time – I don’t think it is important to totally disregard the traditional and antique aspects of the objects. I won’t let you know exactly what my plans are, but I will continue to update the blog with images of my progress. Wish me luck. K.
This image is of my first attempt to make my own brush. I drilled all the holes in the acrylic and painstakingly each any every bristle was put in by hand.
This is the complete brush, which I will be recycling into the newer version of the vanity set. To be truly functional I think the bristles would need to be cut shorter but everyone who has felt the brush says it is so tactile, it would be terrible if I cut them short. What do you think?
This is the comb – it was never fully complete, as the others weren’t either.
Filed under: Gold + Silver | Tags: aluminium, anu, brooches, cast, form z, gemstones, gold and silver, lathe, necklaces, powdercoating, rings, servers, silver, stainless steel
Colour brooches
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Serve
As promised – here are some images from last year.
1st image – these are moveable brooches made from powdercoated aluminium. I was lucky enough to be able to do the powercoating myself, thanks to family connections. These were designed in response to a brief about colour in my 1st semester of my 2nd year in the gold and silver workshop here at the ANU. (So start of 2008) There is one brooch missing which is a light blue and purple. There is also a necklace collection in the same series. Each of those have 4 colours on the wheel. I will try and get some images of these and put them up.
2nd image – these are sterling silver with citrine gemstones rings. They were all cast and then machine worked on a lathe to get that nice smooth edge and clean angles. This was my first attempt at setting stones. I really love this collection. I had intended to use red gemstones, as it is my favourite colour but could only get the citrine. So it was a happy accident that I used that particular colour. Now I wouldn’t change the stone colour at all. They can be worn all together, but they are quite heavy on the finger, but it is a nice weight. These were created late 2008.
3rd image – Stainless steel servers. Last year I had a product design class in which we used a program called Form Z. I designed these on the program as we had a brief in our workshop to create objects that serve. It was a very long process and my teacher in that class was extremely helpful. I had the casting of these objects outsourced. They have 4 serving options – each is a server/handle depending on which end you wish to use. There was alot of work in the cleaning up of these objects, which involved makeshift tools and a few war wounds. I love these servers and they are used for special occasions in my house. These are the larger size, there is also a smaller size that I have not had cast yet.
