E10 Candidates Choice

Cityscape Bracelet by Julia Rai
Cityscape Bracelet by Julia Rai

Submitted to the Registry evaluators - August 2010

This piece is very close to my heart. I originally made it for the project C4, Bracelet with Frames. I thought it might not meet the criteria exactly so I sent it in with instructions that if it didn’t meet the C4 criteria to put it forward for E10 which is the catch-all candidates choice.

It was made from the texture first. I love carving lino and making prints from this but of course, they’re normally too big to use for making metal clay textures. But with this design, I decided to scan it and then shrink it down in the computer to make a tear away texture. I made the elements and put small pockets on the back to hold a photograph slid in after firing.

The images are the same as the texture design, colored in Photoshop, then printed out on photo paper.

I had a lot of fun making this piece and really loved it when it was made and assembled. Unfortunately, the evaluators didn’t agree!

Design – 4 out of 5
Wearability – 1.5 out of 2
Craftsmanship – 0.5 out of 2
Use of color – 1 out of 1

Just scraped through with 7 out of 10 – very disappointing. The comments…

“Nice to see involvement in texture from the early stages of design (as opposed to using found or commercial textures)” Arghhhh! I never use commercial textures – this makes me so angry!

“The bracelet feels ‘loose’ because there is too much space between panels and the jump rings are the wrong scale. This shows up also in the clasp; it appears to hold but the parts will flop around when worn. The result of all this imprecision is a piece that falls short of elegant professionalism.” Ouch!

Strangely it doesn’t flop around when I’m wearing it – maybe I’ve just got very fat wrists! It would flop around on a skinny person – but who are we making these pieces for I wonder? There’s not much point in me making a piece for someone else when it’s for the Masters Registry – I need to test the wearability myself surely. Still, it did scrape through, it’s just so disappointing when I really love the piece so much.

Once again, the Registry photograph of this piece was horrible. My photographer Paul Mounsey took all these photos.

Here is the project description from the Masters Registry website:-

​E10 Candidates Choice

A project designed by the student that does not fit into any other position. This is a Wild Card.

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