A Celebration of Silver in Contemporary Life
8 March 2016 to 2 September 2017
Victoria and Albert Museum
Curated by Corinne Julius
Contemporary British Silversmiths in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum
Silver Speaks was a 15 month long event by Contemporary British Silversmiths comprising over 24 events in the United Kingdom. The focal exhibition, Silver Speaks: Idea to Object was held at the world famous Victoria and Albert Museum from March 2016 to October 2017. My piece ’24:12′ was chosen as the piece to represent the collection in many of the posters and marketing materials.
In ‘12:24’, I used the complicated and multifaceted pieces of the two-dimensional flat sheet and, by using clean lines, facets, precision and containment, turned it into a three dimensional vessel. I first sketched the idea very loosely, before drawing a more fixed idea, using a computer drawing programme. I left the idea to ‘percolate’ in my mind, before making models to examine proportion and scale. Model-making informed the making process and helped her work out how the metal would behave. Sheet metal was hand scribed with precise lines that were then scored, folded, soldered and hand finished | Mary Ann Simmons ‘12:24’, Faceted Vessel Form. Hallmarked London, 2016 Britannia Silver