About Benjamin - The particulars of my training (two years of furniture design, and five days in jewellery making) defined the way I initially approached jewellery: I concerned myself primarily with notions of function and context of use, and usually worked towards self-appointed briefs, whilst one step removed from actual manufacture. Even though I am gradually taking over the manufacture of my work, I believe it continues to offer a design-led alternative to our craft-based profession: as an extended family of individual objects that hope to tackle specific aspects of body adornment - with little concern for overall stylistic or technical homogeneity.

About the work - I have been working for the last couple of years on series of pieces that try to map out how our perception of the body has changed, as new practices in medicine, body adornment and corporeal aesthetics influence, and sometimes contradict, more traditional views of the body, and the way we interact with it.
My working hypothesis is that a vulgarization of medical knowledge on the one hand, and the explosion of body-altering products and practices on the other hand, will have a lasting effect on how we project ourselves on (in?) the body. For starters, the 19th century notion of corporeal integrity, premissed on the conservation of the body as a whole (one indivisible organism), is rapidly being superseded by the notion of body as Work in Progress: the question is less and less whether your body is intact, pure, but which version you are currently using.
And, what sort of dressing would you like with it.


FOCUS..

techniques used When working in metal, I tend to design towards fabrication rather than lost-wax casting, and have a preference for sheet and wire. Alongside one-off pieces using those traditional techniques, I have worked on a series of hands-on, conceptual pieces, the Happy Family. They are meant to be cheaper, almost 'disposable' pieces; the technique I used in those cases is closer to industrial production: stamping (Happy Family Mrs), and screen-printing (Happy Family NHS). More recently, I have collaborated with makers outside the field, for specific projects, using blown glass, resin, chocolate, or dental ceramics.