Gems in Transit

Note: Annoyingly blogger deleted all the content of this post, so all my words have gone out the window! I will try my best to rewrite, but apologies if its a bit short/muddled, I'm very behind on blogposts!

So for this term, we had to choose two modules, one of which was a two-day workshop called Gems in Transit. The project focuses on gems and their influence across chronologies and geographies. For the most part, the two days consisted of presentations from scholars from many different places talking about Mughal gems, pearls, and crystals. Their topics related gems to themes about power, gender, knowledge, collaboration and technology - it was a fascinating insight into their project, and I look forward to reading their papers when they are published.

There were also some more practical aspects to the workshop. After a morning of presentations, we had the opportunity to handle some of the objects with gemstones from the Metalwork collection.  The spread started with a point cut diamond ring from the 1500s, all the way to a 20th century equivalent brilliant cut diamond cluster ring. 

I took some pictures of my favourites which vary from minimal sophistication to outright gaudy fabulousness: The first was a beautiful bloodstone box, made in Paris around the mid-1730s,which is actually a deep, rich forest green (it's a bit rubbish in the pictures). It almost doesn't seem to really be gemstone, but once opened and you could see the translucency of the stone it just made it all the more exquisite. The second image is of a Victorian diamond ring, with three rose-cut diamonds. It looks strikingly contemporary, which makes me wonder whether it has gradually seeped back into fashion in the jewellery world (this is especially as jewellery designers have been able to have further platforms to open up the design process via social media...can't help lusting over Digby & Iona's instagram just as one example). Apparently the rose-cut was surpassed by the brilliant cut because the brilliant cut enables  light to refract more efficiently inside the diamond, thus giving it a striking sparkle. The last is an outrageous Victorian brooch that incorporates diamonds, garnets, topaz, turquoise, spinel and amethyst. Nevertheless, it left us gemmies all lusting and sparkly eyed for our very own blingy bits.

The next activity was to cut some gems ourselves. We all ventured to Blythe House together to meet Nicholas Yiannarakis, a jeweller and gem-cutter who also teaches lapidary at Holts Academy in Hatton Garden. He brought in a domestic set of machinery for cutting and polishing gems, and a handful of stones (albeit not as precious as diamonds or emeralds) for us to play with. We were given a selection of jaspers, agates, and quartz and shown how to cut with a tiny jigsaw, and polish with a teeny sanding belt. All of the machinery had to incorporate water in order to keep the stones cool, so it ended up being quite a messy task.

Although it was quite a fast turnover for a workshop, it was very enriching to do something practical. What has been great about this course so far is the value that is placed on both the practical and academic, and that in many case they are one in the same piece of research. It makes me feel that my previous experience helps a lot with this course, and thankfully my colleagues are also super active and eager to initiate and get involved with projects that enjoy a multi-disciplined engagement.

Now, I'm off to beautiful Liverpool for the bank holiday, have a lovely long weekend!

Fashion and Translation: A new look

This Tuesday was probably the first time I had picked up a pen to draw with in a very long time. I signed up to help rework a website for East Asian Fashion that my tutor and previous students had worked on, which had after a year or so, lost its way in terms of both design and organisation. I was put to the task of reworking the logo and producing some kind of background, to at least start thinking about making the whole thing a little bit more cohesive. We were given a whole bunch of materials to work with, to give up a little bit of a starting point, but otherwise really beginning from scratch.

Imme, Olivia and I came across photographs from the project of a workshop making buttons for Chinese garments, using silk knots. We thought that would be a good starting point for some imagery to work with. We wanted something fresh, clean, and most importantly something that wouldn't be an immediate stereotype i.e. embroidered dragons. I started looking at Japanese, Chinese and Korean garments, especially how they were fastened, and found that knots were a key part of the coming together of a garment. Whether its the way an obi is tied, or how a hanbok is finished with a knotted accessory, the knot seemed to be a small detail we could use to bring the subject together. Rather apt really!

As an East Asian subject, it gave me an excuse to go back to ink. It is my automatic, go-to material, but I felt like I had an excuse to indulge. Although I wanted something bold and strong, I also wanted to make sure there was a sense of natural, ethereal flow. I wanted it to be neither overtly feminine or masculine - although the logo is like a ribbon, I think that it is off-centre enough to disrupt the feminised and child-like connotations. The red is quite centred between orange and pink, which is reflective of a colour that is valued in E Asia, but also helps to de-gender a little.

Then, I got to have some fun with surface pattern. I decided to repeat the silk buttons, which come across as almost abstract. I felt like I needed something to give some texture and depth, while also not taking away from the text that will come later. I couldn't help but put together some really bright and daring colours...its too tempting. But for the practicalities of the website, I used a two very pale greys, which works very well with the red, but also is quite sophisticated... I'm hoping it won't end up being too corporate. It's still all work in progress, but I think I'm pretty happy with this first result!

Some Relief: Anomalisa Review and a quick trip to the Museum of Childhood

I realise I am now two blogposts down so I honestly will try my best, but I am really knackered, so bear with me if I am a bit waffley/or have zero to say at all.

So some of you may know I finished my essay when I wanted to on Monday morning (yayyyy!) and it was safe to say I was bloody relieved to get away from it, just in time for a city walk with the wonderful Angus.

Tuesday, I had some time to work on some design work that I'm helping with (a blogpost will follow imminently!), which was really just a relief to do some drawing for once, and I will be bringing a sketchbook with me to Vienna - we're going on a school trip there in two weeks so its going to be a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to experimenting with some drawing/writing in the same book, which I think will produce some interesting documentary material. I've never really tried it before since sketchbook days at Foundation, and I really resent uni for putting me off using a sketchbook. It's about time I picked one up again, just for my own practice, whatever that practice is.

Wednesday, Rosa and I finally got to see each other after a really long time. With both of us still working on our respective projects, its been difficult to keep up but we finally had a day together which turned out to contain lots of elements of stop motion.

First we went to see the new Charlie Kaufman stop motion, Anomalisa. I had been really looking forward to it as I'd heard good reviews and really wanted to see how it was made. Technically, we both agreed that it was very impressive. The facial expressions were made out of several parts, a part for the upper part of the face for the movement of eyebrows and eyelids, and one of the lower part for the lips. The bodies were quite realistic, and the movements incredibly smooth. Equally we enjoyed how they had used these material aspects within the storyline; there's a part where the main character's face rapidly changes, and falls off, showing why they used stop motion instead of live-action for the film. But the good parts end there really - the storyline was rather disappointing and frankly quite annoying.

They started off very well, really emphasising the mundanity of the story. Only about 10/20 minutes into the story do you realise that everyone aside from the protagonist, Michael Stone, has the same voice and the same face. The film hits a climatic part when Michael hears another voice, the voice of a young woman called Lisa. They have weird puppet sex, and then he dreams that all the people with the same face are all completely in love with him. When he wakes up and proposes to leave his wife for Lisa, she suddenly starts transforming into everyone else. It ends with Lisa writing him a letter, and as the camera pans up to see Lisa and her friend in the car, you realise the friend has another different face. So at the end of it all, its still a film that is all middle-age-white-man-puppet having a crisis, boo hoo.

The film could have gone super surrealist, there was so much opportunity for the film not to be like that. It could have been all apocalyptic or something, anything more than just same old story surely?! It also didn't continue having a reason to be stop motion animation, and its a shame all that effort went into such a rehashed story with neither a sombre afterthought, or an exciting fulfilment.

So we moved on, and with a few hours to kill before we met Hanswan, we popped over to the Museum of Childhood for the mini Smallfilms exhibition. Ahh, some proper, hearty, imaginative stop motion. I remember loving the Clangers, so it was great to see and read about the detail that Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin went to. Also Peter Firmin is superbly skilled, those Clangers are knitted, with a mechano skeleton! It reminded me that making a great animation is not always about swooshy technical skills, it is mainly about a great story. The best thing about stop motion, and animation in general, is that the world is your oyster, you can make anything happen. You can make people fly, animals talk, walk, be on the moon, anamorphise a car, even with human figures, you can reach a fantastically intimate and emotional level that is humanistic and yet different to film...Why waste the time and energy on a terrible storyline? So although these stop motion animations both have two very different audiences, it is clear which one is the more compelling...

Anyway, a little trivia, Bagpuss was supposed to be orange and white, but they sent pink by mistake! To be honest, I'm glad they went for it! And for some nostalgia (or a new discovery for some of you who've never seen it before!) here's the first episode of The Clangers.  I understand there is a new version (??!) which I've not seen yet, but I hope it lives up to its original counterpart!