Linda Connelly is an enamel artist who designs and makes enamelled jewellery and small silver pieces inspired by places and memories. Her work is vibrantly coloured and beautifully finished. Linda uses traditional enamelling skills such as cloisonne, champleve and basse-taille in her own unique style. Her pieces have won multiple awards in the annual Goldsmiths’ Craftsmanship and Design Awards in London.
Enamel Experience
Linda first discovered enamelling nearly forty years ago when her husband bought home an old enamelling kiln from a charity shop. She was immediately entranced by the combination of glass and vibrant colour together with the almost infinite range of possibilities that enamelling offers. Blending and shading different Enamels to build up veils of colour in order to convey mood and feeling never fails to provoke a sense of excitement and anticipation, as no two pieces are ever completely identical. Each piece evolves over a succession of firings, typical anything from six to a dozen or more although each one only lasts a minute or two. Over the years Linda has experimented and explored a wide range of enamelling techniques on silver, copper and steel. These techniques include stencilling; painting; sgraffitto; making and enamelling 3-dimensional forms using copper shim; printing with enamels; plique-a-jour; liquid enamels; foils, mica and lustres.
New Work
Linda’s latest work derives from walking and drawing in landscapes both here in the UK and abroad. They have developed from her photos and sketches as memories of time spent absorbing the flora and fauna around her, walking footpaths over marshes and cliffs, watching the ever-changing colour and movement of the sea and sky. The pieces reflect her sense of awe and wonder of the natural world around us. Linda begins each piece with hand engraving the silver using gravers to create texture with mark making to reflect foliage and movement of the sea and sky. Next she begin to add layers of transparent enamels, using it like watercolours and building up thin veils of touches of colour. Each layer is fired in the kiln for one or two minutes before the next is added. Each piece will have seven or more layers before the painstaking process of finely finishing the surface to create a perfect, smooth and tactile finish. Many pieces are augmented with cloisonné birds using fine silver and gold wire which have painted enamel details.
Linda’s work is designed for special occasions and for everyday; smart nights out and for walking the dog, all with an eye on sustainability using recycled materials where possible to make pieces for today that will become the heirlooms of tomorrow.
See here for Linda Connelly’s CV
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