but at a stretch, I'm sure it can be related to jewellery.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water (go see it bigger on my flickr site)
And over here, Cristobal Vila has created a beautiful short digital movie tour of the house, including it's construction.
Swoon
(found via Design Sponge)
K.W.DOGGETT Fine Paper have put together a publication to promote their envirocare range of recycled paper. It was designed by David Lancashire Design and features the work of a number of artists working with recycled materials. Including me!
That's me on the left, opposite my mate Robbie Rowlands (who also happens to be SGG's hubby - for those of you who are Garage Sailor readers.
It also features the work of Emma Davies
(I'm diggin' that wombat, Emma!)
and Nicholas Jones
and includes work by Stephen Gallagher, Mark Vaarwerk and Simone LeAmon
and I'm on the last page too.
Shameless
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That's the sound of my rusty blogging fingers. Hopefully the hibernation is over. It's the thought of all the catch up that is so daunting but the last couple of weeks from my trip were some of the most interesting so I want to share them with you. Starting with the departure from medieval Tallinn for the vineyards of Tuscany....
For those of you who don't know about it, the SNAGnet email list is a great way to find out about things of interest for jewellers in the United States. Occasionally things get sent out that are relevant for those of us outside the US - such as the calls for images for the Lark Books "500 ..." series of books - but mostly I just glance at the emails briefly before deleting them. That was until I found one that read..."Italian Chasing & Repousse` workshop in Tuscany, June 2007".
Why wouldn't you?
the view from the back of the farm house.
entree from lunch on day one
home made pizzas from lunch on the last day
the padrone's drop
6 days of instruction in Repousse and chasing, accomodation in a farmhouse in the countryside which is a fifteen minute walk through the olive groves to the studio each day, full breakfast and 3 courses at lunch and dinner home cooked using ingredients fresh from the farm. As I said, why wouldn't you?
The instruction was given by Davide Bigazzi. 
Davide grew up in Florence and he and his wife, Elisa, divide their time between their studio and gallery in California and their house and workshop in Pian Di Sco'.
Now, repousse is one of those techniques that I somehow managed to dodge at university. I'm sure instruction was given but I somehow managed to get through without trying it. So it was all new to me. 
the workshop.
Preparing the pitch bowl
Our tools
The first exercise was getting used to holding the tools so we used a liner to create this pattern.
After mastering that we got to work on something more complicated...
This is my effort after repousse and prior to chasing...
And finished
not bad for a first timer.
And here we all are, showing off our achievements.
(L-R) Bill and his serpent dish, Norma (another beginner like me) and her exercise 2 and neckpiece and earrings made from exercise 1, Davide and Elisa, Me and Roy and his two belt buckles.
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'For the Love of God' - Damien Hirst
Was anyone else listening? Radio National on Sunday afternoon? A program analysing Hirsts' "collaboration" with Bond Street Jewellers Bentley and Skinner? With guest commentator Robert Baines!!
If not, you can download it from here
The focus of last Sunday's Artworks program was on 'collaboration' and featured articles on two performing arts works as well as a conversation between Deborah McCoy and Robert Baines analysing 'For the Love of God' by Damien Hirst (pictured). The work is introduced as "the world's most expensive collaboration" but, while Hirst acknowledges that the piece was produced by Bentley and Skinner, I very much doubt that he would call it a 'collaboration'. In fact in most of the publicity surrounding the work, B&S are simply referred to as "a Bond Street Jeweller". This would seem to imply that what is important is not the skills of the particular maker but the value of their real estate!
It was wonderful to hear a contemporary jeweller's (or as Baines terms it, an "art jeweller's") analysis of this work on national radio. I have read much commentary in the press analysing it in terms of contemporary art practice and contemporary art collecting but it's interesting to not have heard much about it from the contemporary jewellery/craft sector (forgive me if I've missed anything).
On a superficial level the work is intrinsically linked to jewellery practice, but the more I think about it, the more irrelevant it starts to seem. Baines points out that if an artist jeweller had made this piece it would be totally dismissed. And he's right. But as he also points out, the use of precious materials in contemporary jewellery is often subversive; stones are drilled into, set upside down, etc. A contemporary jeweller would not make this work, with it's complete orthodoxy of materials and techniques.
Hirst uses the platinum and diamonds to symbolise perfection and mastery of material and technique. Contemporary jewellers use these materials to question those symbols and to talk about what jewellery is and what it can be.
Hirst is not the first artist to employ 'artisans' to realise his ideas, Jeff Koons being the most prominent. But also, closer to home, Patricia Piccinini's practice is more that of a 'producer', she employs a diverse team of people from digital animators to auto paint artists to produce her art works. Usually these artisans are uncredited. In the case of 'For the Love of God' the crediting of "a Bond Street Jeweller" says less about Immortality (as Hirst states the work is about) and more about hefty price tags and inflated publicity.
After Amsterdam, I went back to Tallinn briefly to pack up and to say goodbye and then back to Italy to attend a Repousse workshop in Tuscany! (more on that later). I spent a few days in Florence before the workshop started and I was able to visit Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School.
That's Manuel Vilhena on the left and Doris Maninger on the right. Doris and Lucia Massei founded Alchemia in 1998 and it runs as a private, 3-year, full-time study, contemporary jewellery school. The teachers and past lecturers include Manuel (above and previously posted about here) Manfred Bischoff, Giampaolo Babetto, Helen Drutt-English, Arline Fisch and Peter Skubic amongst many other luminaries. The idea of a private jewellery school on this scale seems very odd to an Australian who paid (relatively) little for her education. but when you remember that college fees in America and some European countries are in the tens of thousands it starts to make more sense. Alchimia takes students from all over the world and the language of the school is English.
The physical size of the school is quite small but the workshops are clean, neat and well equipped. 
The students were setting up for the graduating show while I was there but unfortunately I was leaving before it opened. A few years ago Alchimia did a collaborative project with The Estonian Academy of Art and the result was an exhibition called Twilight
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