Cecilia Moore

Metal sculptor

©Cecilia Moore

©Damien Maddock

©Cecilia Moore

Playing with metal

Cecilia won the Golden Fleece Award in 2018
She loves metal’s malleability and versatility
Simplicity and irregularity in line inspire her

Cecilia Moore fell in love with metalworking at school, shirking academic classes to spend time in the metalwork room instead. “The metalwork teacher didn't know how to get rid of me, so he just carried on with his other classes, while I worked at the back of the room,” she says. Upon leaving school, she had “huge energy” to carry on metalworking, so she joined a course at Birmingham School of Jewellery, eventually specialising in creating holloware in silver. She continued her education in Paris and Dublin, developing the techniques she employs now, particularly raising and patination, which she uses to create playful metal sculptures, each imbued with an anthropomorphic quality.

Interview

©Cecilia Moore

©Damien Maddock

Why do you use anthropomorphism?: It tends to happen by accident or maybe subconsciously. I make pieces in groups that have a similarity but are never the same. I spend so much time and energy on each piece that their individual characteristics emerge. When they are exhibited together you can see the group dynamics.
What do you like about the ancient technique of raising metal?: I love allowing shapes to emerge without sticking to a rigid design. The process becomes intuitive, it calms my thinking, despite being physically demanding and extremely noisy. ln this technological era the idea that this technique has hardly changed since the early bronze age appeals to my inner rebel.
What surprises people about your work?: I design my pieces to be playful, they wobble on their curved bases with the addition of free moving internal weights. These weights are chosen for their sound quality – using fragments or shaped glass, metal and stone they create different sounds when you pick them up and move them.
What appeals most about what you do?: I love playing with designs, I love the feeling of absolute physical exhaustion after a day of productive raising, I love that I have the freedom if struggling with a piece to put it away and move on to something else, I love deciding what colour to aim for on each piece, and the surprise of patination in the final wax polish.

Cecilia Moore is an expert artisan: she began her career in 1978