Juliette Orton

When I have been talking to visitors at my Open Studios exhibition they have been surprised to learn that I studied Silversmithing & Jewellery for my degree (over 20 years ago!). I thought I might share with you one of the projects I did back then and hopefully you can see how it has influenced my work today. A trip to a dress rehearsal at the Royal Opera House and an instruction not to look at the paper whilst we drew the dancers (with the aim of showing movement) led to this sketch above. Back in the workshop, I developed my sketches into wire models (I still love using wire!) and then started to forge metal pieces to convey the curve and movement of the dancers. The image above is my first attempt of a metal candlestick inspired by the dancers. I developed this further and spent many hours forging metal in the workshop in order to produce the final silver candlestick shown below. I had a very muscular right arm due to all the hammering, forging, sold...

Having taken part in several Open Studio events, I have come to realise how much people do like to look at a sketchbook. I find creating the books a hugely enjoyable process and I'm still referring back to and using some of the imagery from the ones I did some 25 years ago! In this post I thought I would give you a quick flick through my 'Marine Life' book which is a more recent creation and helped to inspire my 'Shoal' and 'Sea Garden' ranges. Once I've chosen a theme I generally do a mind map and look at all the different areas I could explore within that theme. Over the next 5-10 pages I play around with different images, textures, media and scale to explore the possibilities. I also like to focus on a few artists or designers that inspire me too and may relate to my theme. I might do a few pages combining their style with mine and my theme and see what happens. I recently wrote an article for 'Workshop on the Web'...