‘Creation: An Insight into the Mind of the Modern Silversmith’, a recent exhibition organised by the Goldsmiths’ Company, explored and questioned the concept of creativity by focusing on a group of leading contemporary silversmiths and their work. Thirteen silversmiths, whose work is admired and collected at home and abroad, were selected including Scottish makers Malcolm Appleby, Adrian Hope and Michael Lloyd.

The exhibition, which is now closed, also featured Alex Brogden, David Clarke, Stuart Devlin, Anthony Elson, Rod Kelly, Chris Knight, Don Porritt, Jane Short, Hiroshi Suzuki and Simone ten Hompel.

Each of the silversmiths was challenged to reveal the source of their creativity and inspiration.  They did this by presenting one or more of their star pieces, either made especially for the exhibition or earlier in their careers.  These were accompanied by their working drawings and sketches and video reportages of the silversmiths talking about their work.

Malcolm Appleby’s, approach to creativity is very down to earth,  “I don’t wake up and say today I’m going to be creative, I just do it.  It’s part of the daily cycle. I am here making and hammering every day”.  He collaborates with other goldsmiths on some of his work especially Peter Musgrove and Andrew Metcalfe who use highly specialist soldering techniques.  Most of his inspiration comes from the landscape and environment surrounding his Perthshire home and also from his many years of experimenting with different methods and techniques where he is constantly developing new methods and ideas pushing out the accepted boundaries.  His work is immensely varied and rich in surface texture and contrasts.   He thrives on working with clients and evolving several projects all at once.  

He is currently working on a series of ‘slashed beakers’.  The inspiration for these came from the splits that can mistakenly occur in beakers when they are being hand-raised.    Appleby was excited by the prospect of deliberately sawing and slashing the metal, soldering it back together and creating the dazzling finished surfaces with his unique etching techniques. 

Adrian Hope believes that creativity is an individual act and the artist must have completely free range which is why he very seldom undertakes commissions.   It is not the preciousness of silver and gold that attracts him as a medium but its wonderful qualities of texture and malleability.   In fact he describes silver as a useless material; anything that can be made in silver can be made in a more practical way in other materials.  He is drawn to the metal’s historical roots which link it down through the centuries to the most ancient civilisations.  His objects are redolent with collective memory drawing on past histories and cultures. 

Such ideas come together in ‘Reliquary for a Traveller’.  He arrived at the boat after seeing an exhibition of paintings on the Brendan voyages. This sparked off the memory of a Celtic gold boat in the Dublin Museum.  Hope enjoys making non-functional objects.  Often his boxes contain nothing.  It is the form of the box, its architectural properties and  sense of enclosed space he enjoys.  In this instance the box works both on a historical and a functional level, the form refers to a precious medieval reliquary but it contains the boat.     

The landscape of South West Scotland, Michael Lloyd’s home provides the inspiration for his work.  He draws on this visual dictionary of texture, form and colour to create his pieces, which reflect the beauty of nature and which in a world struggling against so much brutality he describes as ‘weapons of peace’.   The work has a strong spiritual content and is a celebration of the power of creativity in all its forms.  Lloyd is a compulsive maker, the desire to create is even more important than the finished work for it echoes the constant renewal or rebirth found in nature.  The hand and eye feed an inanimate lump of metal with energy creating a new life. 

He made the gold bowl in the exhibition after a long spell of working on commissions.   Exhilarated by his freedom from the constraints of patrons and deadlines he found himself once more drawn to the leaf theme as an act of homage both to nature and to the art of creation.  

More information about the Goldsmiths’ Company can be found at www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk  

Back to features