Brooch design

My first metal piece of the collection was inspired by a building in Liverpool, I am unsure what the building is specifically, but it looks like it is quite industrial and the flapped walls may work as a sort of extraction as well as an aesthetic.

 

I loved the exterior texture of the building and thought it was quite unusual and a refreshing change to the average brick or glass buildings. I began drawing from it with stick and ink and creating 3D models from card, to which I created many different designs but this was the one I desired most.

Reflecting back onto my visual research, I believe an element of the building to the right (Lotus Temple, India) influenced my design, with it's large scale petal style design, which shares similar properties with my card models.

 

I admire the crisp edges, pointed ends and sleek design as a whole. I originally thought it would work well as a pendant, suspended on a long chain around the neck. 

The soldering of this piece was the tricky part, and took a lot of tweaking, cleaning and reassembling to get it as perfect as possible. As each triangular piece consists of two parts it was difficult to solder them neatly, trying to preserve the crisp edges and points.

After getting confident with this element of the construct I soon began to problem solve a lot faster and soon found the piece was closer to completion!

 

As I began to construct the piece from copper sheet it soon became apparent that it may work better as a brooch, rather than a pendant. As if it were a pendant, the wearer would only be able to view the top, and other people would only be able to view the side, so the full potential of the piece wouldn't be fulfilled.

But if it were to be worn as a brooch, on an angle, the piece could be viewed from all angles and I wouldn't have to be concerned about the pendant being too chunky or heavy for a particular chain.

 

 

All the piece needs now is more filing, polishing and a touch more etching and then it can be silver plated!