David Watkins
Primary Orbits

The pattern’s like four-coloured DNA
helices in orbital spin
or planet-spotting I see red Pluto

locked to its blue companion moon
facing each other like two traffic lights
haloed with methane in deep space.

Looking at bits I imagine the crunch,
a time-reversed rerun of the Big Bang
the universe squashed to this one neckpiece,

the galaxies condensed to clinky rings
and half circles like lemons sliced
to boat across a fizzy gin.
I like the empty spaces in activity
the energy I feel in a design
ready to trigger like a dormant snake

into spiral integrated attack
from a lazy cool loop like a necklace.
Thought-shapes exist in micro-gravity

but get set down like neural holograms
into refocused imagery
dragged out of orbit into place.

There’s no end to configurative fit,
the way I move these pieces round
like a near planet reshuffle,

a white, a blue, a yellow, red,
the possibilities like sudoku
played on a gritty plateau on the moon.

David Watkins
Primary Orbits, 1983

390 mm
Neoprene over steel, four parts
Collection reference: J158
Acquired: 1983

David Watkins has been designing and making jewellery since the 60s, and is known for his experimental approach to materials and technology. In 1984 he was appointed Professor of Metalwork and Jewellery at the RCA – a post he held until his retirement as Head of Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery, and subsequent appointment as Research Professor of Jewellery, in 2006.

He combines this position with his practice as a studio jeweller and occasional sculptor. ‘I like to explore technologies – to discover what they can do for me. And materials. All materials have their own inherent beauty – it’s simply a matter of teasing this out. This means we must also make with hands, eyes and intuition, being true to our personal vision. A piece of jewellery, even when it may be testing the boundaries of possibility, should always tell us it is something to be located on the body. Because its promise will be completed by the act of wearing.’

David Watkins’ jewellery has been regularly exhibited at international galleries and museums, and has been acquired by numerous major private and public collections all over the world, including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and the National Museum of Scotland.

Mo Jupp
Helmet

A futures link – the common grey
doing urban close encounter,
the alien on our alpha waves
staring us down, black and silver
optimal smoke shield for a face

I’ve seen before in a cockpit
guided by sci-fi telemetry
a red compacted space-age probe
altering physics at Brands Hatch
under a money-coloured sky

reeking of Shell diesel firepower
and G forces burnt into tyres.
To me a UFO’s just a face
morphed into spin, the android thing
beamed into contact in a space.

I knew once in a Soho yard,
a neural buzz, the copy there
throwing its shape into my brain
at blackout force. Ham Yard empty
under a silver fuzzy rain…

A pinlock visor at the lights,
I’m locked into the biker’s blank
disarming helmet in red wash
crossing over, his chilled alert
vacuumed into a sonic flash

synchronised to the amber change.
This stoneware one still contains speed
worked from the body’s chemistry
into a movement that’s contained
inside a stone memory-bank

got from a race circuit impulse,
a helmeted driver forced from his car
into the sunlight while his team
ran to the moment and rayed out
round his Ferrari like a shooting star.

Mo Jupp
Helmet, 1972

240 × 200 mm
Reduced stoneware with engobe glaze
Collection reference: P76
Acquired:1972
Mo Jupp is regarded by many as a legend in his own lifetime and his work and teaching has influenced countless sculptors and ceramicists, as well as being acquired by many discerning collectors. His works are sculptural in nature, inspired by the human figure and small natural forms. They incorporate the mystical, the mythical, the sexual and the surreal. He is still best known for the much acclaimed series of helmet forms that he made in the early 70s. Mo Jupp was born in London in 1938 and studied at the Royal College of Art from 1964-1967. His work is in public collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Crafts Council.

Naoko Sato
Transition 39

The shiver in her silver skirt’s
like riffy pop – I mean the erotics of rain
and how each raindrop has a waist
a 38-23-36 figure
writing its font into the lake
like soluble diamonds
millions of liquid Marilyn Monroes
atomised toes first.
With glass the lead’s a pleated skirt
the alluring ripple brokered still
like the movement’s frozen
the way memory isolates
a movie in a cell,
a neural associate
to continuity.
I go with the transition
and it’s 39,
the blue density textured
with a blue rock 60 carat shine.
You can cryopreserve bodies
in liquid nitrogen for the big freeze
or do a ruffled glass sculpture
looking like a sci-fi
no-colour window on the future.
I go right into its translucency
for a vitreous DNA,
head down the street and see Naoko
walking her frisky pleats
into the breezy lilac April day.

Naoko Sato
Transition 39, 2002

480 × 270 × 230 mm
Lead glass
Collection reference: G96
Acquired:2002

Naoko was born and educated in Nagano, Japan, but her artistic development has taken place primarily in England. Since she gained her MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1999, her work has been exhibited all over the world, and acquired by some of the world’s most respected collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK.

Transitions is a body of work exploring movement normally associated with textiles, such as ripples, sways and folds. Naoko Sato abstracts these movements and uses them as inspiration for her striking glass sculptures. Her interest in fabric, and how it responds to an underlying structure or frame, as well as her interest in dance, fuels her art, making it immediately arresting and irresistibly tactile. ‘I have always been interested in the way clothes find their shape on the human body. I love watching a woman with a pleated skirt walking by, creating a wonderful movement.’

Naoko Sato’s method is very unusual and involves several kiln-firing stages. Not only is this a risky process – there’s an increasing chance of fracturing each time the piece is heated – but it is also time-consuming. Each piece may spend as long as three weeks in the kiln.

Edmund de Waal
Arcady

Black steel – it’s a vertical currency
corporate money in the sky
but clean like the symmetry
of Steely Dan’s harmonies – the soundtrack to this stacked sculpture
‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’
as orange-coloured fluency
pop like you taste the modern world
in an upbeat hook
addictively.
The porcelain stash is off-limits
like a high-rise sarcophagus
a dynasty buried in eighteen lots
slotted into a steel skyline – Canary Wharf, the Gherkin,
the first tower burials
each in a glazed yellow or white
porcelain coffin
glossy as a Mahjong tile,
a black skyscraper thrust at Bishopsgate
like a square-nosed bullet
stood on its head,
burial-site real estate
with 24/7 armed security.
Arcady’s the installation
gets out my Pretzel Logic
to hear Becker and Fagen
do a sunkissed ‘Any Major Young Dude’
the song chasing away to fade
and on instantaneous repeat again.

Edmund de Waal
Arcady, 2007

1400 × 300 × 300 mm
Porcelain, steel
Collection reference: P489
Acquired: 2008

Edmund de Waal has exerted a significant influence on the world of studio ceramics, both through his practice and as writer. Since the late 90s his work has moved away from making small domestic objects towards creating installations of multiple pots that challenge architectural space and explore colour through hidden interstices and openings.

First shown in Edmund de Waal at Kettle’s Yard and mima in 2007, Arcady is an excellent example of this new development in de Waal’s work, giving an enticing glimpse of 18 porcelain vessels in six glazes in shades of white and yellow, fitted neatly inside a steel case.

The Crafts Council Collection purchased five works directly from de Waal in 1995, marking a stage in his career where he produced small domestic objects. Arcady brings up to date the record of his work which has shifted considerably in scale and notion of function. [link to discussion in craft curator day]

Edmund de Waal’s work is featured in many public craft collections, including the Museum of Art and Design New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Grainne Morton
64 Compartment Window Brooch

A jeweller’s occupying a whole block
like a rectangular store set in the sky
8 floors with 64 in-store units,
London, New York or Tokyo
backgrounded like a giant plasma screen
the evening cloudy as squid’s ink
a charcoal slab of sky choked with carbon?
It’s the bold black sans serif N
printed on a bright yellow brooch attracts
as dominant like an initialled sun
and EGG and JAM, my eye finds words before
mixed media, breakfast words signposted
like menu boards on 5th and 7th floors
and everywhere broochy affects,
two hearts, mother of pearl buttons, sea glass
the colour of refrigerated ice,
sea shells, pressed flowers and punched metal shim,
all of it in an objects chocolate box,
like post-modern commerce, a Shanghai grid
built like sky-viewing Lego in the clouds,
the number 56 showing up red
as a sixth floor address in a design
spaced with selective retro exhibits
facing down on the moment’s crazy spin
with the calm things collect in private space.

Grainne Morton
64 Compartment Brooch, 1998

120 × 110 × 10 mm
Copper, Perspex, found objects
Collection reference: J254
Acquired:1998

Collecting obscure and miniature objects is the starting point for Grainne Morton’s designs. Through experimentation, objects both formed and found are grouped into ‘collections’ and housed in hand-made boxes. The objects become the narrative form for her jewellery and are collaged together by arrangement and rearrangement until all the objects connect with each other, creating lively, colourful and spontaneous stories. Morton’s work featured in the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2007: Jewellery, and is held in the Museum of Ulster and the Royal Museum of Scotland collections, amongst others.

The various materials used include pressed flowers, old buttons, shells, pebbles, sea glass, printed tin and words or print. To complement these found elements, such hand-made objects as enamel work, miniature drawings and punched metal shim are added to complete the collections.

‘The 64 Compartment Brooch is very typical of my work. I aspire to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. I consciously work in a miniature scale, using a diverse range of materials in order to create attention and involvement in the piece, hopefully sparking memory and thought as well as making onlookers smile.’