Heather Blake - UK - Global Creative Graduate Showcase
Heather Blake
Designer biography:
Heather Blake is a UK based contemporary jewellery designer and maker with a deep interest in ecology, heritage craft and sustainable making. With a background in footwear design. Blake uses the materials and techniques of shoemaking to reinterpret the codes of jewellery. Utilising techniques in leatherwork and repositioning them in the jewellery context she revitilises this heritage craft.
Collection concept:
Marine Alchemy is a collection of oversized bracelets, made using the materials and techniques of shoemaking and based on the form of the signet ring. In this collection food waste is transformed into jewellery. Discarded fish skin is tanned using ancient methods. These methods are combined with Blake’s own tanning process, using food waste as the tanning agent, to create a biodegradable, sustainable alternative to ‘exotic’ leathers such as python.
Blake experiments with scale, material and processes: tiny rings become large bracelets, hard metal is swapped for soft leather and the sharp facets of cut gems are interpreted in richly textured salmon skin.
HeatherBlake_bracelet_Arcanum_2023_salmonleather_napa_wood
HeatherBlake_bracelet_Nammu_2023_salmonleather_wood
HeatherBlake_bracelet_Neptune_2023_Salmonleahter_napa_wood
HeatherBlake_bracelet_Tannin_2023_salmonleather_wood_linenthread
