Making our jewellery
The workshop
Michael Peckitt says :
“Anodised aluminium jewellery is my dynamic wearable art.
Anodised aluminium is high quality metal which has had a current of electricity passed through it with the effect that it becomes the permanent recipient to certain dyes.
On the home page of www.michaelpeckitt.com click on WOW factory, you will see some of the processes I use to make the jewellery.
I take a sheet of the metal and make a painting on it using the dyes. I leave some areas of the metal unpainted. I then dip the painted metal into a vat of one colour of dye. This one colour pulls all the painted colours together to make one complete painting. This background colour is also the colour you see on the inside of the bangle.
I treat the painted sheet so that the painting is permanently fixed into the metal. It is not fixed onto the surface but actually into the metal. This is possible
because the anodised metal absorbs the dyes just like blotting paper absorbs ink. This means that the painting becomes permanent and will not in any circumstances wipe off. I carefully polish until I achieve the desired shine.
It is this process of cutting up the painted sheet that makes each piece of jewellery totally unique, dynamic looking and very wearable art. I do not work to pattern. I am a fine artist. The technique does not lend itself to working to commission.
Each piece is finished by hand so that I achieve the look of a framed painting by making the polished edges of the pieces serve as frames.
The bangles also undergo a process which gives most of them a very special quality. If you look into the bangle beneath direct light you can see that I make this light refract within the surface of the piece so that as the bangle is moved the light runs up and down inside it giving my jewellery a
unique attractiveness.
Bangles are flexible and can be widened or narrowed to fit any wrist.”
Michael Peckitt has built a world-wide reputation for his “wearable art”. He supplies the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hayward Gallery, Aberdeen Art Gallery, The Philadelphia Museum of Art USA, the Miro Foundation Barcelona, The Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, the National Museum of Wales and many others in the UK.
