The Grande Depart

 

The pendant once held the memory of this soldier

Now it frames a fragment of an ancient brooch-a catcher of future memories, perhaps?

The remnants of an opal ring swing from a humble chain
upcycled from the closing of a York shoe shop!



Momento mori

 Bracelet for a traveller?

The journeying swallow and a chunk of bamboo coral

gleaned at York car boot sale!

a heart locket gains wings as memories fly

 

THE GRAND DEPART

New beginnings.

 Adventuring.

 Starting afresh.

 This year the Grand Tour comes to Yorkshire for the first time.

Also this year I have started a fresh adventure of my own-exhibiting my upcycled antique jewellery with York Open Studios.

These two ventures will collide [hopefully not literally] when I show a be-spoke [sorry] creation at the preview exhibition in honour of the famous bicycle race here in York.

Of course, the competitors will be 'just passing through' - fittingly, the name of the exhibition is 'The Grand Depart'; this sparks bittersweet imagery of migration, sojourning, the restless nature of the traveller, perhaps even Peter Pan's 'awfully big adventure' - that final great journey. 

 The question is...what to show?

I did consider making jewellery from broken bicycles, but that seems too obvious and not my style. Perhaps I shall make a fascinator fit for watching races of wheel or hoof? Maybe a necklace fit for a traveller, ready to be embellished with new trinkets and charms gleaned on the journey; a work in progress, as we all are [art mirroring life and all that jazz].

The truth is, every bit of my jewellery is a new beginning, both in terms of being a unique, fresh, new design, and also because the creations arise, Phoenix like, from the jettisoned and treasured of the near and distant past. Because the start of something is always the flipside of the end of something else.

 And I, for one, am all the happier festooning myself with silver linings as I leave the clouds behind.