“Don’t forget your stone bag” is commonly said to me whenever I take off for a stroll on any beach, loyal but disobedient chocolate labrador, Sala, at my side. Any chance to be waylaid, by fossicking amongst sea strewn flotsam and jetsam, for stones, pebbles, bones and shells, I’ll take it!
I particularly enjoy the natural hue of colour, and the variety of shape and texture inherent in Aotearoa’s stony seascape populations. Imagining those stones contrasted by a rustic, bashed silver encasement or on a long, smooth silver stalk, simply ‘rocks my socks’.
No one piece is the same, they just evolve.
With a marine biology background and a teacher by profession, attending some silversmithing workshops in 2018 led me to more fully explore my love of fossicking for stones by the sea and merging them, with sterling silver. I am largely self-taught and simply enjoy starting with an image in my mind’s eye, and then bashing, bending, riveting, melting and moulding silver en route to forming something rustic from our very own seascape.
I share my time between Wellington and Parapara, Golden Bay, New Zealand.