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 About

Jewellery is the most traceable form of ancient adornment. The goldsmith techniques used to create this brooch date back to 3000BC. My concept for the love brooch project was to integrate interactive social media and technology as it stands today, with the structure of traditional goldsmith techniques.

 

The wearer/viewer is presented with an opportunity to engage with this piece. Scanning the QR code with a smartphone leads to this website designed specifically for and about the project. Participation is encouraged contributing a photo of a found heart image, thus creating exaggerated significance and sentimentality in the piece. Facebook, Instagram, which extends to a visual language on a global level

Designed to be worn over the heart, the brooch has talismanic properties in that the love will seep into the wearer by osmosis.

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Story

When I asked my friend and fellow jeweller Emma about the most unusual job she's ever had, she told me that when she lived in Melbourne, she worked for one of those places that buys gold jewellery.  Her job was to sand off all the engraved messages of love from the inside of wedding bands so they could be re-sold. 



This story haunted me, I decided to make a piece of jewellery about it.  I decided to keep any piece of paper that I found that had 'love' handwritten, as a tribute to all the messages that had been sanded away.

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The image to the left is a photo of all the handwritten love I have collected over the years. The making of this brooch involved a fire ceremony, whereby the handwritten love was burned and the ash was set in concrete on the brooch so the love particles become immortalised.



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Codes have been used in jewellery for thousands of years, to convey a visual language marking religion, creed and divination. By recontextualizing code to what is considered modern in present day in the from of a Microsoft QR code, in 50 years, I hope this piece will be seen as a survey of a point in time in technology and visual culture in art.

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