The story of a collection: Peacocks

Here is the background story to my latest collection of jewellery for Autumn 2012 - The Peacock.



I have always wanted to create a collection of jewellery based on this beautiful and intriguing bird. I'm drawn to its obviously ornate tail but at the same time it's quite a peculiar bird - so over the top and impractical. From a jewellers point of view I enjoyed the challenge of trying to re-create this complicated design in miniature format and incorporate the colours of his tail.

My starting point was a collection I developed about a year ago called 'Dahlia'. Although I was please with this collection I always felt it was a little overlooked and needed something more.


It occurred to me that if the piece was chopped in half horizontally and the stone was replaced by a peacocks body then this would be the perfect starting point for the peacock I've always wanted to make.

So with a little adjusting to the photo tool the tail was created. The picture below gives a little idea of how the tail was made by using strips of silver, kind of concertinaed to make a semi-circular fan shape. Towards the bottom of the picture is the beginnings of the peacock body and head that was made by soldering a silver hemisphere to varying sizes of rod and lots of filing. This was the first time I had done carving like this and I really enjoyed it!




I incorporated a way to fix the silver tail feathers into the back of the peacocks body and sent the model of the body off to the casters so they could make a mould of it and get lots cast into silver.



After careful consideration of various types of beads I decided to use Iolites and green Jade to depict the colours of the tail and attached these between the silver feathers.

Below is the finished earrings and necklaces. I have made silver, 22ct gold vermeil and oxidised versions. I was really please with how they turned out and they received a great response from the buyers at International Jewellery London. They are now available to purchase from the website and will be appearing at other stockists in the lead up to Christmas.







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