‘The joy of making things by hand and a sense of bringing materials to life is what I love about jewellery making. I work intuitively and in response to exquisite textures and forms in nature. I aspire to produce jewellery that is sensuous and tactile with strong simple forms that celebrate the beauty and unique qualities inherent in the materials’.
Stephanie trained as a silversmith and jewellery designer at Loughborough College of Art and Design and graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in 1980. Since then she has created unique collections of jewellery that have been promoted through exhibitions, galleries and outlets specialising in the work of international contemporary designers. These have included Liberty’s One Off gallery and Electrum in London. Made at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Dazzle Exhibitions and Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh. Along with commissioned work for art directors and theatre companies including the National Theatre London.
Her move to Cornwall in 1990 coincided with a decision to work exclusively in precious metals. Leaf forms in the sub-tropical gardens around Falmouth and the way contemporary Japanese fashion and textile artists transform 2 dimensional materials into 3 dimensional structures led to a search for ways to pleat and crease metal by adapting techniques more closely associated with Japanese paper folding. Arts Council England awarded a personal grant for her to develop this.
To bring colour and pattern to her work, Stephanie has experimented extensively with heat fusion techniques using a variety of metals including platinum and palladium. She took an intensive course in Italy with Giovanni Corvaja of the Padua school of goldsmith’s to learn how to alloy an assortment of coloured golds using traditional recipes in order to broaden her palette.
