second time around

So...whatever did I finally end up making for the York Open Studios Launch exhibition in honour of the Grand Depart*?

 

A pendant made up of fortuitous finds and the kindness of friends-the two suppliers my craft.

 

The casing from a watch, donated by Fi, was my starting point. Prising out the watch movement itself, endlessly experimenting with what could fill its place -spring breeze wafting through my open window as I try to keep track of the watch hands that I will eventually sprinkle in amongst the tiny golden seed beads from Margaret, who remembers buying them as a child with her mother in the 1930s.

 

A plastic jar top from the 1950s is liberated from the paste jar that I found in Newcastle a decade ago to become both 16 spoked wheel and a clock for the optimist-the promise of more time.

Also from Newcastle,  fragments of an antique brass bracelet, long bereft of its sparkling stones.

A single Victorian Whitby jet bead, the jewel of Yorkshire, carved in the age of the beginning of the bicycle.

And to tie the two countries of this year's Tour de France together, a swallow in flight, found 5 years ago at a flea market in Paris amidst a handful of river pearls and decayed brooches.

 

I have called it Second Time Around-the idea of laps in a race and of a whirring clock, also of New Beginnings and up-cycling.

Perhaps I should have called it Time's Winged Chariot, having emblems of all three!

 

A work of serendipity, it is chance's compass-shake it to see where the watch hands and beads land-a snow globe, a pinball machine, the gold like the sands of time in an egg timer. A charm for the fidget, a medal for the competitor, a pendulum to power the wearer.   

*see it now at the Blossom Street Gallery till mid April-

price £68