Sharon McSwiney
Metalwork and Jewellery

Sharon has been designing and making jewellery, metalwork and greetings cards for the last 17 years after graduating from the Birmingham School of Jewellery with a BA (Hons) in Jewellery and Silversmithing.

Working in both precious and non-precious metals, such as copper and brass, she creates jewellery and metalwork which is distributed widely throughout the UK. Selling wholesale through galleries/craft shops and also exhibiting at retail events. Her studio is also open to the public. Sharon’s designs feature humorous characters and animals often with a theme. She is inspired by folk art, children’s illustrations, textiles and a love of gardening!

Sharon’s jewellery designs are produced from either brass or silver then given a variety of plating/finishing techniques creating different colours. Brass pieces are copper plated and scratch finished giving a warm orange/pink colour. Silver items are either antique finished with a soft grey brushed surface highlighting details in the work alternatively the silver is barrel polished to a bright finish. The plated surfaces are very durable and each coloured piece is also lacquered.

Jewellery designs include a gardening range with Mr & Mrs Gardener brooches complete with their own watering cans! Sea inspired pieces such as a Magical Mermaid brooch, seahorses, dolphins and starfish. The latest additions to the range include quirky sheep, cow and pig designs which complement the popular rabbit and duck brooches. The winter collection of jewellery has arctic animals, snowflakes and angels for Christmas.

With the mobile characters she likes to retain the humorous quality of her work, trying to amuse people with the expressions or funny thin arms and legs. Figures include; gardeners, jesters, fisherman, ballerina, mermaid/Neptune, fairy godmother and super shopper designs. Sharon is always willing to try out new designs if customers wish to order something special. The mobiles are made from a mixture of copper, brass and silver. These metals are soldered together to create colour contrasts. Heat and chemical colouration, in addition to applied wires, etched elements and punched patterns decorate each piece. When completed the work is lacquered to protect the finish. As every character is made individually each one varies from the next.

Sharon also produces a large range of handmade greetings cards, which feature an etched brass motif often to compliment the jewellery designs. Special occasion cards include; wedding day, anniversary, new baby, new home, Valentines, good luck. At Christmas festive cards with angels, robins, snowflakes, trees and reindeers are produced. Continuing with this theme she also makes Christmas decorations which are either silver or gold plated.

Sharon has a passion for gardening, probably due to her grandparents being market gardeners in the Vale of Evesham, she wanted to make something which could be placed outside. This has led to a range of ‘garden sticks’ which are decorative etched motifs to place out in the garden or in tubs and pots. These are made in copper and brass the idea being that they will weather with time and will develop a green patina on the metal surface. Some of the designs currently feature; watering cans, garden fairies, hedgehogs, frogs, butterflies, rabbits and ducks.

The latest pieces have evolved due to a love of pattern and colour. A move away from batch production figurative and themed pieces to concentrate purely on creating different textures, more experimental, not worrying how the final piece will look but making each section individually. When a variety of pieces have been made different arrangements are tried to discover which sections work best next to each other. The overall effect is to create a metal ‘patch-work’ with all the separate linked pieces working as a whole. Each time the metalwork is viewed another detail is discovered, not everything is obvious immediately. The techniques used to produce this work include; etching, fusing, punched decoration, deliberately melting areas, embossing, hammering textures and heat colouration on the copper, brass and silver. Each piece is unique as it is not possible to re-create the effects from the heating of the metal. The aim is not to produce quantities of similar sections but to constantly evolve new effects on the metal. Currently the only restriction is with the size of the individual pieces of metal limited to enable heating properly to solder. The completed pieces could be very large indeed if many sections were joined together.

Another addition to the business is that Sharon occasionally runs workshops, primarily for adults, giving an introduction to working with base metals. Sharon is happy to work to commission for both 2D and 3D work. She has designed greetings cards and gift wrap for various companies and had a book ‘Start a Craft Greetings Cards’ published by Apple in 1996. She was also involved with another book ‘The Creative Jeweller’ in 2000.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved