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Alison Macleod: jewellery maker

Original, playful jewellery combining precious metals with junk shop chic.

About Alison

Alison graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a 1st class honours degree in Jewellery and Silversmithing. Now based in Glasgow, her work has been exhibited all over the country, and in New York and Krakow. Her designs are also available in galleries from Exeter to Orkney, Australia to Japan.

Alison’s vision

The aesthetic of Alison’s jewellery was initially informed by her photographs and abstract drawings of Edinburgh junk shops, and these ideas have fuelled her ever since.

‘I love to imagine the stories connected to each discarded artefact,’ she explains. ‘The mysterious narratives of people’s pasts are suggested by the dents and scratches on each piece. The junk shop becomes a museum of memories.’

Jewellery has traditionally been used to keep the memory of a loved one close to the heart, with keepsakes passed down through the generations. Through her use of traditional shapes such as the cameo, Alison references the significance of jewellery and its intrinsic connection to memories.

Adopting a wide range of materials, techniques and images, she conveys the eclectic nature of her subject matter in an original way. Silver wire finely soldered into clusters celebrates the intense decoration found in Victorian jewellery, saturated with tiny curios of different textures and colours, like objects in a junk shop.

echniques such as wax casting, sheet silver piercing, reticulation, stone setting and bead stringing allow Alison to combine silver and gold with semi-precious stones and found objects to create thought provoking pieces.