Kairos
Britannia silver
H 280 mm x W 490 mm x L 520mm
2013

Every journey has a starting point and as I reflect back upon the start of this journey I feel so grateful that the works of art committee right from the beginning were so encouraging, challenging me to stretch my creativity and giving me the freedom to be ambitious with my designs.

This centrepiece has been the most ambitious work that I have made so far in my career and has truly been a labour of love for me over the past 9 months. I feel that I have grown incredibly as an artist silversmith through the journey of completing this commission.

The original spark for this piece was inspired by the form of eryngium leaves and their wild appearance. I wanted to capture this element without trying to imitate the actual form of the leaves themselves. As my ideas evolved through drawings and paper models, I began to develop a narrative for the piece. I thought that the reason that the leaves were so wild and dangerous looking was because they were protecting something that was delicate and precious at the heart of the piece.

I decided to goldplate the central buds to convey the precious nature of what the leaves were protecting.

Quite often we can misjudge situations, people and even art by what they appear like on the outside and it is only when we look at the heart that we can truly see the good.

I wanted the central buds to be almost hidden to convey this idea and try and ask people to take a second and third look deeper into the piece as a metaphor for looking beyond outward appearances and looking at the heart.

My hope for this piece is simply that people will take a second look, maybe from a different angle and see something that they didn’t see at first.