Case Study - Emma Wilson

Emma is a silversmith, jeweller and enameller, and makes small bowls in copper, fine silver and enamel, and jewellery in fine silver and silver. 

Enamel is a form of glass which fuses to the metal in a small kiln at around 800 degrees centigrade.  It has a beautiful translucent quality and can be used in many different ways to convey narrative and colour on an object. Emma’s enamel work is inspired by my watercolour paintings of the Scottish landscape and huge Scottish skies.  She is hugely inspired by my surroundings and her work is currently focussed on the coast around Aberdeen and the North Sea.
 

Prior to getting her VACMA award Emma had been back making for around 3 years and was at a point of working out what she enjoyed making the most and what kind of maker she wanted to be. 

Her recent participation on the Craft Scotland ‘Compass’ Programme had helped her identify short term aims to develop her silversmithing and enamelling skills and expand her offering of silver and enamel bowls into different scales and larger pieces. 

She now wanted to push forward her practice and improve her skills in raising and silversmithing and expand her knowledge. 
 

Emma used her funding to provide an injection of cash to purchase some larger silversmithing stakes, some copper, some fine silver sheet and some larger quantities of enamel so that she could develop her silversmithing skills and make bowls on a larger scale to those she had made to date.  

The award also allowed her time in her workshop to develop her skills. 

She made around seven copper bowls in varying sizes between 14cm to 20cm in diameter and one fine silver bowl which started as a 16cm diameter disc. 

These bowls developed her existing themes of landscape and environment and created larger bowls that can be held in both hands.  

The bowls are decorative pieces but represent an ancient ritual of sharing and nurturing, and while they don’t contain sustenance in the form of food, they do perhaps sustain the soul with abstract ideas of landscape and place.  

“The sea calms me when I am stressed or worried, pebbles held in my hand calm me and comfort me when I am not by the sea.  My bowls aim to do the same, they feel comforting to hold and they are something which can be shared. I am trying to evoke the feeling of the landscape without reproducing it exactly, to replicate that feeling of calm, but also the exhilaration of being by the sea and watching the waves, or marvelling at a huge, beautiful sky.”

She says of the funding “It would have been difficult to justify the time and expense had it not been for the VACMA bursary. It was good to get the few tools I needed, and quickly, so I could make that leap and really go and just get on with it.”

Emma feels that this VACMA has been important to her ability to make bigger silversmithing pieces. It has acted as a starting point to broaden her skills in this area of her practice and resulted in her expanding her offering to customers and as examples to show at exhibitions and larger silversmithing shows.

“My VACMA award has definitely had an impact. It meant I could develop these skills quicker than I thought I could. Had it not been for Covid I Probably would have gone and trained with someone in person, but the VACMA award enabled me to have the time in the workshop to do it myself and figure things out as I went along.

Going forward I’ve got a greater skills base to work from. I may go and work with others in the future but doing it this way has given me the confidence that I can also learn these things on my own. It has made me want to do more and develop things even more.”