Enzo 97

There is love in your body but you can't hold it in
It pours from your eyes and spills from your skin
Tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks
And the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts

Florence and the machine

Enzo 82

Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving of
The cruelty or the grace

L. Cohen

Enzo 79

You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me.
It's just the way it changes like the shoreline and the sea

L. Cohen

Enzo 52

Enzo 35

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of.
Dance me to the end of love

L.Cohen

It is my 16th wedding anniversary today

Enzo 32

Enzo 27

Enzo 21

If I had a heart I could love you
If I had a voice I would sing

Fever Ray

Enzo 20

You grow me like an evergreen
You've never seen the lonely me at all

Placebo

Building relationships

I have realise that whilst I am looking at using elements of decorative wrought iron in jewellery, I actually want to speak more about different types of relationships. My first piece, the spiral stair is an example of how a structure can represent a feeling. Spiral stairs often lead to a lonely, small room, therefore I have coupled it with Leonard Cohen lyrics, emphasising that aspect of the piece.

 

Well, I choose the rooms that I live in with care,
the windows are small and the walls are almost bare,
they've only got one bed and they've only got one prayer;
and I listen all night for your step on the stair.
L.Cohen

What is it about wrought iron in particular

So, in order to understand my own rational for investigating wrought iron instead of, say, watchmaking, Guilloché, Japanese metalwork or any of the other fields I'm interested in, I have to unpack and examine what wrought iron means to me.

The first thing which comes to mind is a type of nostalgia for lack of a better term. These disciplines represent skills which have either fallen into disuse or have been replaced by machine lead manufacturing. The industrial revolution whilst vital in our progress as a species has left some very important values in it's wake. The equation of time equaling money has lead to people doing the absolute minimum to get the job done. With that rational, some bar stock welded into squares become our burglar bars and the beauty of a forged grill gets left out of the equation. Mass produced rings which have barely passed through skilled craftsman's hands are sold at more of a profit than individually crafted pieces of jewellery.

I am aware that our quality of life in general has improved since the industrial revolution, I know if cars were all hand made, very few people would be able to have them. What I am doing is romanticizing, ignore any bad and buff up the good. Sometimes you have to emphasize something, make it bigger and more clear in order to wake and awareness in the viewer. What I'm trying to do is give people a visual reminder that once we did not accept anything less than beautiful, even if the object was functional.

I've decided that I will couple each piece with a line or two of song lyrics or poetry, either engraved or etched into the piece or displayed along with the piece. Words are a powerful medium to invoke thoughts and feelings. They also lend clarity of intention, often it's the title of a piece which gives the biggest clue as to what the artist is getting at.