17/03/2026
I am so delighted to have received a Gold Award in 3D Craft and a Silver Award in Design from the Goldsmiths’ Craft and Design Council for our collaborative work Emberstone Vessels, made with Jessica Jue.
Jessica and I had wanted to create something together for some time. We have long enjoyed working alongside one another on curatorial projects to create exhibitions and opportunities, but this was the first time we made pieces with each other directly in mind.
Our ambition was to fuse Jessica’s amazingly rich and uniquely textured surfaces of powdery, seemingly effortless hammerwork and handmade gold foils with my more precise and carefully crafted forms. We wanted to create vessels with a totemic, honed and hand-shaped quality that felt almost ethereal and captured the essence of ancient forms bathed in fire.
We both really enjoyed making these pieces and it has been a refreshing experience for me to work alongside another maker in this way.
I would like to thank the Goldsmiths’ Craft and Design Council, the team, and all the sponsors and patrons of the event, in particular Grant Macdonald Silversmiths who sponsored this award.
It was a wonderful awards evening, made even more special by sharing the stage with Alewijn Slingerland, someone I first met through my work as Principal of Bishopsland and who now shares a studio with me. It was particularly lovely to see him receive the Gold Award for 3D Craft for his candlesticks, an impressive achievement just three years on from when we first met.
Congratulations also to the Bishopsland cohort who received awards, and to all the other winners.
Our pieces will be on display at the Birmingham Assay Office from 23–27 March.
