Silver musings on life
- Jenny uses heated scrap silver to achieve a signature rustic look
- Social, political and spiritual themes inform all of her work
- Her exhibition work inspires her bold jewellery designs
Jenny Edlund is a silversmith and goldsmith by training, apprenticed with the renowned Christer Jonsson and Lena Bergestadt. She has been making jewellery for 25 years. Jenny also teaches and lectures at home and abroad, and has exhibited her work extensively. In addition, she has a background in university psychology, which, combined with her metal-forming training, art research, and theory, gives her work a unique existential expression. Jenny’s jewellery celebrates life and explores the big themes and ponderings of human existence: the subconscious, musings on time, change and decay, and the circularity of life. Her jewellery, holloware, and exhibition pieces are expressive and thought-provoking. Jenny specialises in crafting textures and developing surfaces in recycled silver.
Interview
- How do you approach creating surfaces that have a charcoal or rustic look?
- Heating the silver to the point where the surface melts, the surface starts to move, shrink, or get waves on the surface. This process is unpredictable. Sometimes, the silver becomes a ball. Other times it transforms into something wonderful to work on.
- What attracts you to holloware?
- The possibility of holding a liquid is something I find beautiful. To me working with glossy silver surfaces is time-consuming and if I did only this, it would drive me mad. So I started to beat up the material and build symbolic forms of bowls. I find this much more interesting.
- Your jewellery is very personal. Can a piece become too personal?
- Personal reflections and intimate confessions are built into my work. But people can recognise themselves in this. My creative process is very personal, but I have learned to release an items as soon as it is completed, and it becomes free for others to interpret.
- How do you balance existential themes with making jewellery?
- I am a constructive minimalist with an eye on clean, straight lines. I also have a dramatic approach where emotions and serendipity are my driving forces. This way of working on either end of the spectrum satisfies my temper and constant need for challenges.
Jenny Edlund is an expert artisan: she began her career in 1996
Where
Jenny Edlund
