How jewellers interest in myths and legends led to a new exhibition

She says she has always been fascinated by myths and legends and for the last five years has been making more than 20 pieces of art made from silver and gold which form a new exhibition at the Ropewalk, Barton on Humber.

For Jacqueline the body of works entitled Curiosity is a departure from the normal bespoke handmade jewellery she is best known for, but something she is really passionate about and has spent a long time researching.

"It really started to come together during lockdown although I’d been thinking about it for a while,” says Jacqueline who works from a studio near York. “They’d been in my head for sometime and I was fiddling around with some silver as I was stuck in my workshop not really able to go out due to Covid.

“I have always been interested in Myths, fairy tales, legends and the stories of the saints and I love iconography so over the last five years I have been working on these silver pictures depicting various stories,” she explains.

“I have had a long association with the Ropewalk, a fantastic place with so much going on, and will be running a few workshops to go alongside the exhibition. It is called Curiosity as it is my curiosity that inspired me to make the pictures.

“In today’s eclectic, educated and globally connected world we have lost the need to work around a calendar, let alone a calendar influenced by seasons and beliefs. Our markers of time and reminders of why places are named on the map is moving further away from our everyday knowledge but, if you are curious, there are tangible remains all over the landscape, in literature and art.

“Pagan stories and traditions of our ancestors were absorbed into Christian culture, brought here by the Romans, the two combining, legends overlapping. Collective memories dissolved legend with historical fact, myth with real people. Imagery and illustrations captured the great and the good, men and women, often venerated, were the celebrities of their time.

“We can discover the fabled and sainted graphically which has provoked art and captured oral traditions of song, legend and sagas.

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Icons traverse language and literacy, depicting people, seasons, creatures and place. Many of the symbols are powerful and universal. They communicate an idea or an action. They encourage us to pause, reflect, explore. They can help us to look back and forwards beyond ourselves, providing a sense of place and belonging to an increasingly busy world.”

The silver ‘pictures’ or ‘icons’ that Jacqueline has created are all made from fine silver with 24ct. gold detail.

"The figurative work is depicted using the ancient technique of chasing and repoussé. Some of the tools I use for this have been passed down through generations of silversmiths and some I have made myself.” The gold is applied with the Korean technique of Keum Boo, which involves the silver being heated then the 24ct gold foil is burnished on using an agate burnisher.

Jacqueline started training as a jeweller at the age of sixteen, first working for a renowned jewellery designer, Pamela Dickinson before going on to Bradford School of art and finally studying both silversmithing and jewellery in Sheffield – “the home of silversmiths” says Jacqueline.

After leaving Sheffield in 1984 she set up in business designing and making her own range of jewellery along with taking on specialist commission work.

The mother of four lived near Bempton for nearly 30 years and for 20 years ran a jewellery school from her workshop there alongside her own work. She has now relocated to York.

“I am lucky enough to have been working at my bench since then,” she says. “Using the qualities of the metals and stones in their various forms makes designing each piece a challenge. To watch a piece develop as the form and shape changes during the making process is both fascinating and exciting.”

All her jewellery and larger silversmithing pieces are hand made therefore no two pieces are the same.

For that last 40 years Jacqueline has been designing and making jewellery, silver vessels and doing specialist commission work, but she wanted to branch out and use her silversmithing skills to create something different.

“I employ traditional techniques and work with silver, gold, precious and semi-precious stones,” says Jacqueline. “The magical properties of the materials I work with are themselves an inspiration." She does York Open Studios and has exhibited with her daughter Constance Haddenham who has followed in her mum’s footsteps and become an jeweller in Yorkshire.

She has already sold some of her pieces in the Ropewalk exhibition which she says is “very exciting.”

As well as making jewellery Jacqueline says at the moment she is doing a lot of remodelling of old pieces.

"People come in with some rings which they may have inherited which can be melted down to make something new. Remodelling inherited jewellery that is often stuck in a drawer, unworn and outdated, is very rewarding. These heirlooms have great sentimental value and can be transformed into new pieces of jewellery bringing the memories of the previous owners closer to the wearer.”

She has also recently done a big commission for a church in Driffield.

Curiosity, an exhibition of myths, legends and saints by Jacqueline Warrington, continues at the Ropewalk Gallery, Barton-on-Humber, until December 2.