Cathy Newell Price
Cathy Newell Price | Jewellery | Devon
Cathy Newell Price makes jewellery from precious metals combined with vitreous enamel and gemstones. She is known for her decorative and detailed designs with botanical forms, birds and landscape all featured.
Her work expresses her passion for the natural world, especially plants, which is not surprising as her original degree was in Botany. The pieces are sometimes symbolic, sometimes figurative, and others just evoke a sense of an environment or landscape.
The starting point for her pieces originate from her observations and drawings. These are simplified to get an essence of what they are and the resultant drawings imprinted into the metal using etched plates and roll-printing or by chasing with steel tools. She also casts silver by pouring the molten metal into hand carved one-off charcoal moulds. When enamelling, the indentations in the silver are wet-packed with enamel which is fired into the surface. It is a long process and eventually the surface of the enamel is stoned back so it is flush with the silver
Many pieces are finished by patinating the silver to give a dark oxidised appearance creating atmosphere and emphasising texture and colour.