Craft Central Members Make It To KickStarter 2015!

Craft Central are proud to announce that a staggering six of its Network members have been chosen as part of the 2015 Kickstarter ten person line up.

The hotly contended contest, now in its seventh year, supports the best of design by offering ten outstanding designers a place on this unique mentoring initiative. Winners benefit from exhibiting on a group stand at this year’s IJL Diamond Jubilee show and receiving valuable marketing and industry support from both IJL and the British Jewellers Association. IJL's Trend partner, the leading jewellery forecaster, Adorn Insight, will once again give the Adorn Insight Award to one outstanding KickStarter, which includes a year's subscription to their jewellery market intelligence resource and bespoke mentoring. 

IJL 2015 will run from 6 to 8 September 2015 at Olympia GRAND, London.

The industry will be invited to vote for the ‘People’s Choice’ – the KickStarter who they feel is the one to watch.  All potential KickStarters also will be encouraged to campaign for votes. The prize is a free stand in the Design Gallery at IJL 2016.  

You can vote for your favourite KickStarter here. 

Flora Bhattachary

Flora creates dramatic fine jewellery with a couture edge. Inspired by her family’s links with India since the 18^th Century, Flora draws on Asian influences and an interest in patterns to create her bold designs. Mixing historic artefacts, family history, Islamic and Hindu art, Flora is “devoted to telling a story not in words or paint on canvas, but in gold and precious stones” (Maria Doulton, Telegraph Luxury).  Flora combines CAD technology and rapid prototyping with traditional drawing, hand wax carving and fine jewellery skills. She mixes new technology with ancient traditions to create timeless pieces. Specialising in using vibrant gems and rich colour combinations, Flora’s work is unashamedly opulent and seductive.

Mirka Janeckova

 

Mirka is a Czech jeweller, living and working in London. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2013, and then continued her practice as Jewellery Artist-in-Residence before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Art. Mirka's ‘White Collection’ is inspired by the colour white, surrealism and the deep sea. This collection has won several awards in the UK and internationally. She only works with ‘white’ materials, such as porcelain and silver, to create these playful, poetic pieces. Her jewellery is designed as a container for the wearer’s emotions, memories and hopes. Each piece explores the relationship between people and their subconscious mind. She is currently developing an innovative way of applying traditional metal-smithing techniques onto porcelain. Her forthcoming wedding collection ‘Pearls and Porcelain’ will be shown at IJL.

You will also be able to meet Mirka and see her work at our Made in Clerkenwell: Open Studios in May. 

Francesca Marcenaro

Francesca creates unusual pieces of jewellery, mixing different techniques, in her drive to deliver organic and tactile results. She recently started to make pieces in oxidized silver trying to find the same black-blueish colour of the raven’s plumage. Inspired by granulation, a traditional technique from her home country - Italy- and the opalescent glass often found in Art Deco, she has developed a technique of using crystals as granulation on her pieces which gives a sparkling effect and tactile texture. All her pieces are inspired by fairy tales and nature: through every piece she narrates the story and gives it meaning.

Rosalie McMillan

Rosalie makes unique, handmade, contemporary jewellery from unusual re-imagined materials. Her recent collection combines recycled sterling silver and gold with a beautiful material derived from coffee grounds. Her jewellery is striking, asymmetric and angular, inspired by the properties and form of the materials she works with. Through reinventing materials into covetable pieces with depth and originality, Rosalie hopes to inspire our own sense of creativity and potential. Rosalie supports the communities of people growing coffee through donating ten percent of her profits to her chosen charity, Coffee Kids.

Rosalie is one of our new members, and we are excited to see her exhibit for the first time at our Made in Clerkenwell: Open Studios in May. 

Laura Parra

Laura combines traditional jewellery techniques with contemporary silver-smithing, as well as drawing on her background in fine art and restoration. In her collection “Enlace”, each piece is handmade and designed to show a relationship or connection between the stone and the metal. The pieces are built with overlapping drops of metal, an unusual technique that creates an organic, soft shape containing intrinsic textures. The collection “Rocks” uses different gemstones and every piece is unique and influenced by the gemstones, often set with sapphires and diamonds to compliment them.

Meet Laura and see her work at our Made in Clerkenwell: Open Studios in May.

Ilene Steele

Ilene Steele is a jewellery designer, born and raised in NYC and now working out of her workshop in London’s Hatton Garden. Her bold unconventional style pays homage to both cities.  After training as a photo-journalist and working as a financial systems analyst, Ilene’s response to the increasingly digital world was to retrain as a jeweller and join the 'Hand Made in Britain’ movement. Ilene, never one to be held back by convention, designs and constructs simultaneously. Her debut collection, The Wave, is a clear demonstration of her innovative style. The playful array of cocktail rings, stacking cocktail rings, earrings, bangles, pendants and cufflinks, is inspired by the unpredictable nature of life. Throughout the collection, the boat-like settings of precious metal are loaded with semi-precious marquise gemstones and presented in unexpected sea-faring positions as a metaphor for the erratic and exhilarating experiences of everyday life.