Helen Drye North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
I am a silver jewellery designer. My work is inspired by Skipwith Common National Nature Reserve, behind my studio, near York. I love to create 3D jewellery: little pictures featuring the woodland, with robins and blackbirds, and the moon peering through the trees. I work in sterling silver and silver clay, creating my own textures from drawings, and moulding the clay into little features.
I create little pictures of Skipwith Common in silver. I love wandering through our local woodland, seeing the details, and I try to recreate some of these scenes in my practice. My practice is a mixture of sterling silver, traditional silversmithing, and silver clay. I love to replicate tiny 3D features from the woodland, like the birds, the moon, seed pods, mushrooms and branches and the bark of trees. In particular I love those tiny knots and holes in the trees, and incorporating these into my jewellery. silver clay is fabulous media to do this in - the versatility of clay and the strength of silver. Each of the components is made by hand - on a miniature scale; birds, mushrooms, the branches, then assembled in a way to provide strength. As a result each one is unique and a mini work of art!
