Meet The Makers: Watch Yorkshire craftsman's 'magical' process as he makes jewellery from melted down metal

Crafted from precious metals and rare stones, our most treasured jewellery is often a token of love, given to mark a significant rite of passage in our lives: an important birthday, a wedding, a promise, an heirloom that links us to someone passed.

We invest the jewellery we love with special powers; these precious metals and stones become such a part of us that we feel lost without them – they seem to become connected to our personal strength and power.

Some might call it superstition, but for Hebden Bridge-based jeweller Toby Cotterill, it’s magic. “I think human beings are capable of magic,” he says.

“We can all go beyond what we do in our everyday and get to a different place, and it can help us through hard times. I’m not saying that my jewellery is magic, it’s not me doing it, it’s people putting their emotions and memories and histories into a piece and giving it power.”

Throughout the ages people have imbued jewellery with talismanic power. The objects we make from precious minerals and stones have been buried with us and long-outlasted skin and bone. Those ancient objects continue to exert an influence and connect us to the stories of people who lived before us.

In his tiny-but-perfectly-formed workshop in Hebden Bridge’s Northlight Studios (tobycotterill.co.uk), Toby sees himself as part of an ancient tradition, using tools and methods that jewellers and metalsmiths have refined and developed over thousands of years.

It’s a magical process to watch. Toby takes gold or silver, melts it, moulds it, cuts and hammers it, drills and files, heats it and plunges it into water, rolls it in sand – completely absorbed, at ease with his tools and lost in the making.

And somehow the metal takes on a new life, becomes something else – a shimmering beetle or fossil-like thing emerges. Something both ancient and alive at the same time, a moving, sparkling, precious thing with weight, something you want to touch.

One of four brothers, Toby’s childhood was spent in the hills and woods of the Welsh countryside. “Dad was a furniture maker, mum was a nurse,” he explains. “We didn’t have much money, but we were very happy. There was a move at the time toward self-sufficiency, so we had a small-holding, a few fields with maybe 20 sheep and a few pigs and cows.

"Mum and dad between them would work really hard, working the land and bringing us up. I think they wanted us to have that kind of childhood – grubby in the fields, learning the names of animals and plants and trees and just playing outside, making things.”

The connection with the natural world that Toby developed is still strong and influences all of his work.

“We spent a lot of time outside, lifting up stones and logs and seeing what was underneath, invariably there’s a whole host of life, and being the type of person I am, I wanted to know what everything was. I had a little nature encyclopaedia – which I’ve still got – and I’d just go through that and look up everything I found, just by osmosis absorbing and understanding these natural forms.

“I’ve always made things, partly because we didn’t have a telly, and it’s amazing that you learn about materials through doing.”

So it was no surprise to anyone when Toby chose 3D Design as a degree course at Staffordshire University. After dipping into glassblowing, ceramics, making automata and more Toby explains that he was most strongly drawn to fine metals, particularly loving the precision of getting details into small objects: “It all came together for me with my degree show and I made six pieces of wearable sculpture, all inspired by the natural world and everything that I’d absorbed in my childhood.”

Like many artists and craftspeople, Toby found it necessary to rely on other income, working as a carer whilst developing his craft and building up a client base in whatever time remained. “But there came a point where the urge to make was burning,” he says. “I was out on a run one day and I thought ‘I need to do this with my life, this is what I want to do.’ So I literally ran home and registered as self-employed.”

In 2016, Toby was selected for the Crafts Council’s Hothouse programme, which provided business workshops, mentoring and connections to help new makers establish their practice and business, before taking on the role of Crafts Council Talent Development Ambassador.

“Craftspeople are often great at making,” explains Toby, “but it’s all those other skills – getting out there, business skills, selling your work – those are often the things you need in order to make a successful practice. I felt so proud to be selected for Hothouse, not only to help develop those skills, but that recognition and the support and investment in my potential was a real boost.”

Toby now works full time as a silversmith and jeweller, and physically maintaining the connection with the natural world and a child-like fascination with organic forms remains the heart of what inspires him.

A typical day will begin or end with a run on the tops above Hebden. “Suddenly you’re in a different place, a different headspace and you can just be in the moment.” Along with his partner and his two daughters, Rowan and Holly (“both red-berried trees” says Toby, smiling) the family can often be found rummaging in the undergrowth or by a stream, looking under stones to see the life beneath. “I want them to enjoy nature and explore the environment like I did – I love sharing that. They’re both creative and they love nature as well.”

But when he’s not spending time outdoors and with his family, there’s nowhere Toby would rather be than the workshop, surrounded by the tools of his craft, and fully immersed in the process of turning precious metals into magical jewelled creatures. “I have my best days when I’m in the workshop and you just get that sense of flow, that’s when I have some of my happiest days.”