Beer Jewellery? Yep.

14/11/2016

Barley earrings. Photo buy Suzannah Maree Photography.

Amanda and Steve of Invercargill Brewery are staunch supporters of the Arts in the South. They knew the struggle of being a small, startup business, and they know the joy of bringing something unique and genuine to an appreciative audience.
Invercargill Brewery sells their craft brews, some selected international imports, glassware and merchandise in the Cellar Door shop attached to the on-site brewery on Leet st in Invercargill. They approached me a couple of years ago about creating a line of brewery-themed jewellery to sell to their many international and out-of-town visitors. Thus began a long process with a huge learning curve for my arts practice.

Invercargill Brewery's "Meet the Brewer" event. They host frequent arts and cultural events at the Brewery, including local bands and visual artists.

I had already been thinking of making a line of jewellery that partially outsourced the manufacturing. When I hand make every part of a piece of jewellery, it inevitably takes a long time and needs to be priced accordingly. This was a good opportunity for me to explore having some elements of my work made by some other manufacturing process, and thus make my jewellery more accessible.

Some of the design process in my workbook

When I finally had the design finalised, the biggest problem, among many, was getting someone to laser cut stainless steel. I talked a bunch of different businesses (staying within New Zealand as I wanted to keep it as local as possible) but not many were prepared to make a small run for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the galvanised iron crystalline surface that I wanted as the laser cutting couldn't be accurate enough for my design. Eventually I found one that would do the cutting, had a small test run done, then ordered a big batch.

Earring front plate as received from the laser cutter on the left, and after about 10 minutes of work with my needle files and a tiny sawblade.

The earrings picture a head of barley, an ingredient of beer, on a shape a little like a barrel. The pendants show three apples on a branch. I especially like Nally's Cider, a crisp, low-carb cider made from heritage varieties of apple, grown near where I live in Arrowtown.

The teensy tiny nuts and bolts that hold the jewellery together. Matchstick for scale.

I imported some gorgeous miniature nuts and bolts from a model train supply outfit in England, and washers from Australia. They came with their own little wee spanner and socket wrench. using these tiny tools on the tiny nuts and bolts is my favourite part of making up the jewellery.

The back of a pendant and earring, showing how it's held together with the bolts and nuts. The washers turned out to be necessary to stop the nuts sinking into the wood.

I carefully selected and brought in the chain, earring hooks, catches and all the other findings. After a few trial runs and ironing out problems that came up (sounds simple but it took MONTHS) I finally had the jewellery ready to go.

The packaging was another new thing to me. After a whole lot of searching, I found a supplier who could stock me with cards and cellophane bags that fitted my product. Happily, I've been able to use them for my next product that involves an industrial process, this time, 3D printing. I also got some stickers made up especially for this packaging.

As a beautiful finale to the manufacturing stage of the project, my friend Suzannah Maree photographed the jewellery. She had been involved with the finishing and assembling of the jewellery so knew it intimately. Her photos of it are stunning. After being embedded in the problem-solving process for so long, it was wonderfully refreshing to see Suzy's take on my creation. She saw it with fresh eyes, and showed it back to me in these beautiful photographs. Suzannah is an accomplished photographer. I'm especially enjoying her new Instgram page featuring intimate wildlife and nature scenes.