Feature: miniatures - pieces on show at Upper Street's Gill Wing Shop from June 8
Above: Melanie Tomlinson’s moth.
Published: 3 June 2010
by JOSH LOEB
The strange beauty of creepy-crawlies has inspired a range of miniature pieces on show at Upper Street’s Gill Wing shop from June 8 as part of London Jewellery Week.
The show, called Menagerie, celebrates the skills of five leading jewellers who are pushing the boundaries of the craft.
They include Old Street-based Serbian designer Milena Kovanovich and Frances Wadsworth-Jones, who works in New North Road, Canonbury.
Ms Wadsworth-Jones’s insect creations include silver rings featuring tiny ant “jewel thieves” carrying away gemstones.
Her “Thieves” series – including an ant circus – will be on display for the first time in Gill Wing Jewellery alongside her innovative bulldog clips, which she has redesigned as butterfly clips.
Ms Kovanovich’s newest collection, meanwhile, is described as having “tendril-like qualities” with flagella that coil around the wrist like a vine or tentacle.
Another of the designers whose work will be on show, Marta Mattsson, has transformed squashed insects into grotesquely beautiful objects.
This is not the first time Gill Wing Jewellery has displayed designers’ tributes to six-legged minibeasts; artists it has worked with in the past include Melanie Tomlinson, who is renowned for her vibrant illustrated moth and butterfly brooches.
• Menagerie is at Gill Wing Jewellery, 182 Upper St, N1, from June 8-30, Mon-Sat 10-6pm, Sun 12-5pm. 020 7359 4378.