“My aim is to create jewellery which is easy for everyone to wear yet thought provoking in the message it carries. As someone who walks in the countryside and sees the changes in the seasons at close quarters, I want to remind people that our natural environment is precious. Now more so than ever, we need to think carefully about our place in the world.”

creative practice

Lucy’s work manifests her sympathy with nature and her understanding of its fragility. It is beautifully handcrafted, textured jewellery which speaks of the details of our natural environment and the deeply rooted human connection to landscape. Each piece feels as precious as that pebble you curl your hand around and slip into your pocket as a reminder.

“I have spent the majority of my life in big natural landscapes, moorland and parks, mountains and coastlines. The outdoors is my get away and my sanity. It is the place where I find clarity and calm. I have become more aware of the growing separation of society from the rhythms of nature and have chosen to express this through jewellery.”

Using her Granddad’s old workshop tools, each piece she makes shows the marks of process and the beauty of form, reflecting the patterns of nature – the outline shapes of rocky outcrops, the surface patterns made by hammers like the texture of stone, small spurs of silver and gold to replicate the growth patterns of lichens.

Lucy works full time as a jeweller and has a BA Hons from Glasgow Art School as well as 2 years of practical experience working in a jewellery studio in Trinidad. She is an award winning jeweller and is a member of the Crafts Council - the national charity for craft and Design Nation - a portfolio of some of the most acclaimed and innovative designers and craftspeople form across the UK. You can find out more about her current shows and exhibitions here.

my inspiration

The wonderful ancient landscapes which surround me in Cornwall are my inspiration. Lichens, old stone buildings and field boundary walls, weather worn rocky outcrops along the Cornish coast and rugged open moorland are all places I find inspiration from and all are features of land which I walk on a daily basis. I am fascinated by how closely our lives were once bound to the rhythms of nature and use a small element of gold to represent the importance of the natural environment.

My fascination with Lichens, which influence many designs in my collections, started in the woods at the Ironage fort at Round Wood Quay near Trelissick. After heavy rain or storms, the ground is littered with incredible silvery forms which are reminiscent of bare winter trees. These life forms are ancient and grow everywhere, they cover roofs and creep out of the crevices in masonry. Around 1700 species of lichens live in Britain, they can be found in most places where the air is sufficiently clean and they are a symbiotic relationship of algae and fungus. Their nature, to me, sums up how I view the human connection to our environment; one cannot survive without the other.

Silver and gold are my chosen materials. The colours are perfectly suited to my inspiration and the surface is very adaptable. Using hammers and files I apply pattern and create form using my Granddad’s old workshop tools. Sometimes I sketch out ideas first, sometimes, I start out with a fresh piece of metal and as I work, the piece of jewellery grows out of cuts made and marks imposed. This is where the alchemy becomes something completely transfixing to me.

The work of the writers Philip Marsden and Robert Macfarlane have proved a great source of interest, the time they spend walking and the depth of knowledge they have about their environment and the history deeply embedded in the landscape.