Pierce Healy

Telling stories through jewellery

• Pierce made rings for Peter Jackson’s movie Mortal Engines
• As a musician, he has recorded five albums
• He used to be a stand-up comedian in San Francisco

A natural born storyteller, Irishman Pierce has been trying to tell those stories in different creative ways his whole life. His first love – “my foundation and my fuel” – is music. He has been writing and playing guitar since he was a teenager, and it was music that brought him to jewellery making. Years ago he and his band moved to San Francisco, and whilst living there he stumbled across a shop selling gold panning equipment and jewellery making tools. He bought some materials and started to experiment. After much trial and error, he started to develop the type of work he is now known for: engraved silver and gold jewellery that tells his subversive, surreal, funny or macabre stories.

Interview

©Alex Sheridan

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Where do you get ideas for your designs?

Ideas are triggered by ‘textures of the everyday’. I am constantly walking, wandering, sponging up my daily experiences, gathering stories, observations, surreal happenings, fragments of overheard conversations, jokes, music, songs, films, TV, radio, even toilet graffiti, to inform my work.

What’s your approach to making?

I play with traditional jewellery making techniques and hand engraving and give them a contemporary twist. I also like to use the ‘wrong tools’ – tools, materials and techniques from other disciplines – in my craft. Experimentation is my teacher and keeps me entertained.

What’s your creative process like?

Many pieces start as experiments and the outcomes direct me. I am always doodling, which informs my engravings, but I don’t transfer drawings to metal, I engrave straight on to the metal. Watching the image and texture unfold keeps me interested and always surprises me.

You lived in the US and trained in Sweden – how has travel influenced you?

Meeting new people, new cultures and experiencing new landscapes is a crucial part of my practice. Travel and training colour and inform my work. In addition, travelling is an opportunity to showcase my work to a wider audience and to develop my network.

Pierce Healy is a master artisan: he began his career in 1997 and he started teaching in 2007

Works

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Where