Jane Adam

Jewellery maker

©Jane Adam

©Alun Callender Photography

©Jane Adam

The perfect match

Jane's jewellery is said to change people
Her work often contains secrets
She treasures finding the right piece for a client

Jane Adam is a lifelong innovator who has carried out her pioneering work for four decades. Her jewellery is shown in leading galleries and exhibitions internationally and can also be seen in many museum and public collections. Led by a spirit of inquisitiveness, her natural language is metal. Unconstrained by this material’s traditional rules, her work shows steady evolution and a sense of circularity, where everything comes around in excitingly different ways. Jane pushes her materials to their limits to explore their inherent qualities, such as how a metal tears or gains texture under stress. Such free thinking allows unexpected outcomes to be appreciated and exploited for their intrinsic textural or visual beauty.

Interview

©Jane Adam

Why did you choose to make jewellery?: I love colours and patterns, but found I wanted to make small tactile objects. I was able to combine these interests with a fascination with how people presented themselves when I started making jewellery in coloured non-precious materials.
Do you master any specific techniques?: I have developed many widely influential techniques for the colouring, marking, texturing and forming of anodised aluminium for jewellery. My work is now in digitally printed aluminium and in precious metals. My techniques of forming and assembly are highly original.
How do you combine tradition and innovation in your work?: My work is informed by the jewellery of the past. However, we live in a different world with many new possibilities and experiences. I make pieces that seem relevant to me, in the hope that they will mean something to others as well.
What do you love most about making jewellery?: By becoming part of the wearer’s experience and expression of self, my jewellery is transformed and completed. I know I have succeeded in making something relevant when other people respond by buying and wearing my work.

Jane Adam is an expert artisan: she began her career in 1981