UNEARTHED
This work will explore my family’s personal heritage as Afrikaans nomadic farmers in 1900 South Africa. Each piece will reveal an exploration of the creation of ‘home’ within the arid and vast South African landscape. Each piece embodies traces of life found on their journey as well as their interaction with the robust and beautiful land. The collection reveals a primitive tone and narrative of the landscape that my family, along with many other nomadic farmers have called home.
An intimate relationship to ‘journey’ and ‘home’ will be revealed in each piece, telling a story, which will serve dually serve as tactile tokens of commemoration for an ancient way of life, thought only to be passed down generations through storytelling, treating the construction of notions of ‘home’ as an heirloom. Stones will be suspended and submerged within materials, and pieces of jewellery will come together to form one. ‘Setting’ is represented in a few different ways throughout; setting the idea of‘home’ and the setting of stones.
The pieces in this collection will bring its wearer “back to the earth” through the use of primitive and authentic materials like vulcan black clay, porcelain and hardwood in conjunction with metal and other traditional goldsmithing skills to present the juxtaposition of a nomadic ‘finding of home’ with traditional notions of boundaried home today. The use of natural materials like hardwood and clay intend to reinforce feelings of connection to the landscape. The collection begins with the “Ties” bangle,which features the use of a warm Holm-Oak carved knot, encasing and carrying a suspended stone. The ‘double setting’ of materials reveals visual motifs like knots and delicate nests, originating from my nostalgic memory of the weaver bird nests in the Fever Tree in my childhood home garden, conceptualizing the notion of picking up, carrying, knotting and collecting, crating boundaries and outlining areas of home. The combination of materials is central to the ‘journey’ that is travelling through such a robust landscape, lending itself to the collection of found natural traces of life and materials used by animals to create ‘home’, including leaves, twigs and grass, like that of the Weaver bird nest. ‘Suspension’ is shown to allude to the personal and intimate idea that home is indeed ever- changing, yet always found in the journey that is the South African landscape. Deep and warm toned materials are used to further allude to the personal childhood nostalgia of the warmth of the South African sun, the warmth of the early evening breeze, and the warmth of the feeling of ‘home’.
