Engineering Nature by Artist Jeweller Sophie Symes

About

Sophie Symes’ art jewellery pieces are created by combining a diverse collection of ideas and imaginings. Drawing inspiration from her wild rural Worcestershire surroundings and combining this with her love for surrealism and fairytales and their escapist connotations, Sophie makes pieces of wearable sculpture using alternative materials.

She applies her traditional jewellery making techniques and spontaneous working method to metals and ‘throwaway’ natural debris materials such as twigs and lichen. Using paper cutting techniques, she hand-pierces delicate organic forms from copper, brass and silver and combines them with the found debris, constructing fantastical adornments. The amalgamation of ‘precious’ metals and found items is intended to address the question of what makes jewellery truly precious.. which materials are intrinsically more ‘precious’ and ‘valuable’... the readily available silver or the fragile lichen covered twig that can never be replicated?

In this brand new collection, ’Engineering Nature’, she has focused on her interest in history and delved deeper into the world of Victorian curiosity and the collection of strange specimens. From this intriguing subject matter, she has produced man-made vs. natural hybrid specimens which utilise the delicate forms of insects and lichens and combine them with raw industrial materials.