Lucy Sylvester – portfolio

Contact the artist

https://www.lucysylvester.co.uk
07989 436458
lucy@lucysylvester.co.uk

Exhibition information

Lucy’s love of the British countryside started as a child, her pockets often filled with seed heads and feathers. Her love of the natural world and collecting has continued, her woodland finds are now displayed in her Oxfordshire studio, hanging from the walls and stored in old science jars. Lucy studied up to MA at Birmingham’s School of Jewellery and taught before following her practice full time.

You can see where Lucy works, her studio tools a mix of traditional hand tools and more modern equipment. Lucy can talk to you about reusing old or broken jewellery in a bespoke piece. You will see tests and experiments on the walls and stored natural materials in jars.

 

 

 

Artist information

Lucy believes you cannot compete with the beauty of nature, its perfect lines and textures, so uses it as directly as possible. Taking moulds from her delicate finds, she casts into the cavity they leave, allowing her to create exact replicas of life in solid silver and gold that retain the finest details.

‘These natural forms with beautiful textures would decay into the ground and be gone forever, with direct casting from them I’ve created something that will now be here forever, to be worn for a lifetime.’

Lucy creates engagement rings and wedding bands, simple lines from cow parsley stems, rye grass, lichen, leaves, twigs and seed heads wrap around to create rings, the fragile veins and stems clearly visible as the designs overlap to create a collection of fine botanical wedding jewellery, all cast from British countryside plants with a scattering of diamonds.All the silver and gold used is 100% recycled. This is continued in the making of each piece, the precious metal filings created through sawing and sanding are collected and put back into the refining pot.

The Great British stag beetle, bees and hawk moths have all been given a new life in solid silver and gold by the nature loving jeweller, her Hawk moth ring was chosen by costume designer Michele Clapton to be worn by Sansa Stark in the hit medieval TV series Game of Thrones. And most recently her Dragonfly necklace appeared on HBO TV series And Just Like That.

‘My work is evolving all the time, as the seasons change, the inspiration is new once more.’