At the beginning of this month I had the amazing opportunity to attend International Jewellery London; an event that brings together an array of jewellery business and jewellers. As a ceramic jeweller one of my main goals was to search for the use of ceramics as to see where my material currently stands and also to study how exhibiting jewellers displayed their work.
I found many amazing jewellers at this event but only on exhibiting jeweller used ceramics in her work; the wonderfully talented Mirka Janeckova, who was kind enough to talk to me at great lengths about her work. Mirka was exhibiting as part of the Kickstart stand; a programme sponsored and supported by the BJA with the aim to show the latest cutting-edge design. Mirka sums up her inspiration and collection as ‘White’, defining her collection in a single word as to make it easy for people to immediately connect to and understand. An idea I was very interested in and currently I can’t say that I can do that with my own work and which she suggested I should consider doing too.
Mirka’s layout was sleek, professional and simplic as to let the detail of her unique work really shine, the gray a perfect complimenting background for the colour pallet of her work. And whilst we share a common material her style is completely different from mine in the abstract organic form which to me suggests moss and coral. She uses these forms as a pairing between the silver and porcelain which draws the two different materials together is a harmony. She has also struck on genius in my opinion as how to communicate the durability of porcelain to a customer; ‘porcelain pieces appear fragile but they are surprisingly durable with a hardness 7 on Mohs scale- the same as most semiprecious stone’.
It was extremely exciting to see ceramics not only at IJL but in the kickstart jewellers section and whilst it would have been lovely to have had multiple ceramic jewellers to meet it was also invigorating to see exactly how fresh and new the material is to the modern jewellery industry, especial presented by such a lovely inspiring person at Mirka Janeckova.
http://www.mirkajaneckova.com/
Rachel Codd 