London Craft Week: Contemporary British Silversmiths

In the morning you will have the opportunity to chat with and see the work of Alice Fry and Ray Walton and in the afternoon the makers will be Katie Watson and Vicki Ambery-Smith. The demonstrations will be in Room 66 and 68 of the Whiteley Silver Galleries from 11.00-13.00 and 14.00-16.00.

This event is part of London Craft Week.

Alice Fry is an award-winning silversmith and jeweller whose work reimagines secret geological treasures that appear out of this world. Alice encapsulates the natural beauty of crystals, rocks and mineral formations using the ancient technique of chasing and repoussé. Alice specialises in the metal niobium and is one of the only makers in the UK using this refractory metal. This enables her to add vibrant and iridescent colours to her pieces through anodising.

Katie Watson takes inspiration from the natural world around her, mainly around her hometown of North Berwick and The Isle of Arran in Scotland. On these adventures she draws anything that captures her attention, creating designs enriched by her imagination. Using silver as a canvas, she translates her drawings onto the surface using chasing and repoussé, producing wonderlands of nature in unique pieces of jewellery and silverware.

Ray Walton has been working as a silversmith for forty-four years after completing a foundation course at Hornsey Art College and then three years at Medway College of Design. He makes contemporary silverware, mostly to commission, and his work is held in private collections and in the Goldsmiths Company collection. He has won many awards throughout his career including the prestigious Jacques Cartier award. Over the past fifteen years, he has been involved with educating the next generation of silversmiths which has become a passion, teaching at both the Goldsmiths Centre and the Contemporary British Silversmiths skills training programme.

Vicki Ambery-Smith’s distinctive style of silversmithing reflects her great interest in architecture. Using techniques of manipulation and trompe d’oel to get her desired effect, each piece is an interpretation of a particular building. She specialises in celebratory and commemorative pieces which capture the client’s love and affection for a building of special significance. Growing up in Oxford initially inspired her and she studied jewellery design at the famous Hornsey College of Art before being awarded a Crafts Council grant to establish her own workshop in 1977. She has exhibited widely ever since and her work has been selected for many public and private collections around the world, including the Royal Scottish Museum, Norwich Castle Museum, Los Angeles Museum for Contemporary Art and Houston University, Texas. The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, acquired a selection of her design drawings as well as pieces for their jewellery and silver departments.