Archived Snip: Alexis Bittar, bracelets and bangles

Beautiful bits of jewellery mixed with walls cracking and crumbling. 

This jewellery designer is pretty clever and amazing with his variety of bracelets and bangles.
Not a single rough or sharp edge, the jewellery shapes often takes exaggerated forms, tubular and always so beautiful. They have an edge of other worldliness about them that I find fascinating, I think its his use of kind of frosted materials, or materials with a translucency to them.
Lucite, a material used to form the some of the bangles and bracelets he makes, is a type of thermoplastic which is known and used as a shatter-resistant alternative to glass, a material traditionally associated with bangles due to the way glass clinks and makes sounds when bumping or hitting each other - like bells? Plastic bangles don't share this sound, their more clunky really in that respect, but their safer and stronger than glass. Lucite is also known as perspex or acrylic.    

References:

Alexis Bittar (2014) Alexis Bittar. Available at: http://www.alexisbittar.com/ (Accessed:15th April 2014).

Ellis, K. (2009) 'Alexis Bittar Crystal Bangles', The Gloss, 1st November. Available at: http://www.thegloss.com/2009/11/01/fashion/alexis-bittar-crystal-bangles/ (Accessed:15th April 2014).

Scottsdalefashionista (2012) 'Flower power ! Don’t miss Alexis Bittar’s spring jewelry trunk show at Nordstrom !', 19th April (Online). Available at: http://www.scottsdalefashionista.com/flower-power-dont-miss-alexis-bittars-spring-jewelry-trunk-show-at-nordstrom/ (Accessed:15th April 2014).

 

 

Yee Sook Yung, Blue Ceramics and Gold

2010
Ceramic trash, epoxy, 24k gold leaf

 

Upon seeing this advert in an old copy of Art Review, I did a little digging on the artist.

Website: http://www.yeesookyung.com/

Using what is thrown aside and normally thrown away by a ceramics master. An artisan who reproduces old Korean ceramics (Joseon Baekja or Celadon), the pieces deemed by the master as not up to a high enough standard are cast out.

After baking in a kiln by using the old method, these Korean ceramic masters break almost 70 percent of the porcelains, they don't reach up to their masterpiece standards. Then she takes over, putting 'the broken bits and pieces of ceramic trash together one by one as if I'm putting together a jigsaw puzzle. And I cover the seams with 24 karat gold leaf. The result was uncanny and bumpy objects. Each broken piece operates as a self forming into an infinite proliferation toward as unexpected fabrication-fictitious loquacity and stuttering discards from standard conventional masterpieces.' (Yung, 2014.)

Yung works with these pieces like she is forming a 3D collage, with cracks and raw or rough edges imitating the torn edges found on paper and card, and representing similarities with the sculptural forms of Henry Moor works, in terms of curved and bulbous shapes that look like their glooping in places and splitting by process of mitosis, a fantastic mess of what has been chucked. Busts and bodies and displayed limbs and creeping trunks that weave and wind and grow into obtuse shapes. These works give us a glimpse of a mastery that we may never really see again. Each piece is unique, and special in its present particular state, unlike the historical whole counterparts that are copied from - these have rebelled against their identities, their beautiful shapes becoming grotesque but then so brilliantly given lines of gold. Precious again.

 

 

References:

Art Review. (2011) 'Yee Sook Yung 14.01.11 - 17.02.11', [Advertisement] issue. 47, January - February 2011, p.13.

Saatchi (2014) Yee Sook Yung. Available at: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/yeesookyung.htm?section_name=body_language (accessed on: 3rd March 2014).

Y.S.Yung (2014) Translated Vase. Available at: http://www.yeesookyung.com/01_translatedvase2006-2011.html (accessed on: 29th March 2014).

 

Archived Snip: Blue flowers and Golden Light

Some found clippings from magazine advertisements:
(Can't remember which one).

This beautiful very simply coloured pale blue on white

presents two different flowers in a repeating pattern

surrounded by stems and leaves. Its hard to tell where the

repeat begins and ends in the original snippet. 

The edge of the cutting presents a nice

picture of real (or maybe fabric/fake?)

flower with the carefully printed floral image

that is either a wallpaper or a vinyl sticker.

In a beautiful kind of rhubarb red/pink.

This damask like pattern is very regal looking - suiting the wedding based advertisement naturally. The rich golds and the lighting of the image seem to show a richness of the pattern that perhaps wouldn't be seen without such effects. the pattern is very Victorianesque.

White wool and golden thread

Scarf made of white wool knit and golden glitter thread.

The patterns on it consist of wavy lines and almost like drawings.
The overall effect is lace like,
taking inspiration from the revival of lace and netting on clothing.

The popularity of wool throughout the autumn and winter has been really important in getting me to see this material in a contemporary light. Mixing coloured wools with glittering threads and beautifully designed knits has been a key textile popular trend.  

My first white woollen scarf in years.
A birthday present that is still in pretty good nick.

Geometrics and the red telephone box

Old red telephone box.
Black and white dots.
Golden-yellow lines and boxes.

A part of a series of collages I made last year.
Looking at both colour and geometric shapes that bring together a strange kind of theme to the collage.

 
 

Fabric Selection

A few photos I found weeks ago that I never posted but really should have. 
Below is a border design like piece on
a dress styled kameez (tunic top), which is a detail I love.
The whole suit puts purple alongside orange,
and then the touches of brown on the embellished
areas help when it comes to looking for matching jewelry and shoes. 

Just brilliant, two colours rarely worn in my opinion that are brought together.
The trim uses pink, white and brown shiny rayon like threads,
looking into damask like designs that
surround the flower shapes.
Lotus like blooms horizontally lined up.
The light plays with the shiny thread;
creating areas of shade, of light and dark.

The embellishments to the above neck area of a top are quite interesting, using thick black thread to create this beautiful leaf motif
and these splodge like flowers drops,
alongside swirls with sequins dotted around the shapes.
Leaves venation in gold thread – lush!

Victorian Design and Ornament - and I didn't have to do any research to find that out

I feel like I should have referenced this book Harvard style.
Any way here is what I got from Amazon:
Meyer's Ornament - Victorian Bible of Design by Frank Sales Meyer

In the library bookshelf above,
and got some pretty graphic golden lines below.

The 'O' in Ornament on the spine is known as illuminated text.
One of the earliest texts found with illuminated text is The Book of Hours.
A quick Google search of this will give you a wealth of words and images. 

Blogger likes to rotate images no matter which camera I use,

I'm going to get to the bottom of this though.

The image in the corner here uses typical Victorian ornamental imagery.
The vine like lines that seem to have an attitude of movement about them, 

almost like a clock face with the interruption of the 

golden blocks that seem to divide the circular motif into pieces. 

Newcastle Mela, September 2011

Photos from Newcastle Mela 2011

Ooops...bad photography skills results in an
interesting incredibly motion blurred image, 

the pattern lost, but perhaps a new one made.

The Mela in itself, is an amzing show of diversity and culture in Newcastle,
it's a celebration of what makes Newcastle a fantastic and amazing palce to live
and of course is a perfect oppotunity to eat good food (with or without the spicy kick).
It has an amazing lineup of performers and live music
that would gurentee to make you stop, take a seat and listen.

The photos coming up are simply of the kurtas there.

Kurtas are tunic like tops,

like a kameez (the blouse/top part of the shalwar kameez),

they are worn with trousers like jeans or actually suit like trousers.

The above pattern comes from a red kurta I bought.

The sun or flower like motifs really attracted me to it in the first palce.

This kurta is in the currant style of a dress.

 Like any clothing styles vary season to season,

at the moment the dress style is..well in.  

ORANGE! Hah bet you didn't see that one coming.

Meticulouse beadwork again,

I don't think I've seen orange beadwork in a while.

Seems to be a colour not often used on clothes.

Hopefully next year I can get more photos,

might include some of the actual music, and costumes worn too.

Brown and pink and all things pretty

Cut offs from an old kurta
(basicly a tunic top with a mandarin collar).

The deep pink colour can't really be seen here for one of 2 reasons:
1) my camera isn't as good as eyes at picking up colour
2) an incompetent photographer.
Take your pick. :D

The detail on the neckline area spills out onto the chest area.
The use of beads and pretty gold disks and
the chain like stich embroidery speaks for itself.

A closeup of these cicle disks shows they ae detailed with lines,
so far I haven't found any other fabric adorned this way.

The golden brown beads imbedded
amonst the very fine chain stich

Chain stich how to

Aztec like Patterns (plus a bit of shiny)

You can't really see the shiny, but trust me,
the material has silver thread running up the pattern.
Click on the images for a closer look.

I googled 'Aztec patterns'
and found various images.
The Aztecs were tribes of people in central Mexico,
their culture a colourful one.

The traditional Aztec patterns,
as found on artifacts and surviving works
show patterns that are angular,
straight backed and not very often curved.
No doubt these patterns would
translate into pixel art very well.  

The Old

I always come across books in the library with amazing spines, makes me pick them out despite some being really big volumes of chunkyness filed with lots of text and some images. I flick through, then put them back....in the right place might I add (to all those smirfs who decide to just shove them anywhere).

Any way these I photographed a while ago. I will try to continue to photograph interesting patterned/ornamental spines.
As usual CLICK for a BIGGER image.

Vines and leaves, in lovely glossy gold

Intertwining motifs that link and curl