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Memory is passionate about gems. Her work combines the wonderful colours and natural beauty of many different gem materials with skilful and labour intensive carving which creates distinctive free form sculptural gems, many of which she incorporates in eye-catching pieces of jewellery. Her method of stone setting encapsulates the gems gently and unobtrusively into precious metals allowing the full beauty of each gem to show. She enjoys combining unusual colours shapes and textures designing and making each piece herself to produce a truly unique product.
In addition she designs and carves contemporary luxury items such as perfume bottles, pen holders, and pocket sculptures inspired by natural forms such as shells, insects and plants. Not happy with just creating these extraordinary works of art she revels in the challenge of doing traditional plique-a-jour enamel where again she is attracted by the vibrant colours and play of light that can be achieved in this most difficult of enamelling techniques..
Born and educated on the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Memory was greatly influenced by the natural wonders and breathtaking beauty of the African Veld. In 1966 she graduated from the Johannesburg School of Art with a Diploma in Commercial Art and a love of sculpture. With her husband Bob, she has since lived and worked in England, Singapore, Malta, and Hong Kong, the latter for 18 years. All these places have added to the influences that show in her work.
Mainly self employed between 1972 and 1981, she took on a number of private commissions covering an extensive range of art, craft, and design activities including photography, sculpture and painting. She also ran her own small business producing educational doodle posters and colouring pads for children, Always busy with her hands she designed and produced numerous pieces of Macramé Jewellery and even a Macramé stage set, and she was for a time the Chairperson of the Hong Kong Craft Guild.
In 1981/2 she worked as a conservator / restorer for Anna Plowden in Kingston-upon-Thames. Always interested in stones she became a Gemmologist in 1985 and founded the "Gem Education Center" an Allied Teaching Center of the Gemmological Association and Gem Testing Laboratory of Great Britain in Hong Kong in 1987. She ran the centre until she left Hong Kong in 1995. She was editor and a committee member of the GAHK, (the Gemmological Association of Hong Kong) and president of the GIA Alumni Association as well as being on the board of directors and the Far East representative of the GIA Alumni Association in America.
In 1995 she left her family still living in Hong Kong to return to the UK as a student at the School of Jewellery part of the University of Central England in Birmingham. So began a full time two-year BTEC National Diploma in Design (Precious Metals & Gemstones) she also taught Gemmology daytime and evening classes at the School up till June 2000
In 1997 she set up a workshop in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter and currently works as a Gemstone Artist, Jewellery Designer / Maker and Enameller.
Other interests include Silversmithing, Archaeology, Geology and Mineralogy.
On 3rd March 2003 she was awarded a Commendation for her Plique-a-jour sweet dish ''Cityscape'' by the Goldsmiths Craft and Design Council at Goldsmiths Hall in London.
Centrepiece have recently accepted her as a member and she participated in their exhibition at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham in December 2002.
The RBSA (Royal Birmingham Society of Artists) awarded her the Reginald Lewis Prize for her work at the Open Exhibition in 2001 and in 2002 she was accepted as a member and won the prize for her jewellery collection in the Prizes Exhibition. They also gave her a joint two man exhibition with Mel Mars the glass artist in November 2002
The Art in Action Gallery at Waterperry near Wheatley, Oxford has carried her work on a regular basis since 2000
She has exhibited at the International Jewellery Show at Earls Court in London in September since 2001 and at the Spring Fair in Birmingham in 2002 and 2003
She had booth at the Gem and Lapidary Dealers Association (GLDA) show in Tucson Arizona USA from 1999 to 2001 and has had work displayed at:- The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham. The Cecilia Colman Gallery London, Atelier 71 Gallery in Fareham, Orlando the Jewellers in Guilford, The Allen Brown Gallery nr. Lichfield, Crystals of Exeter, Artfull Expression in Birmingham, the Stone Gallery at Burford, Artists and Craftsman Gallery in Cheltenham, and in the USA at the Kane Marie Gallery in Virginia Beach, and Van Mar Gallery Greensburg, PA.
Memory's work can be viewed at the following locations and events:
All Year
Artfull Expression 23/24 Warston Lane Birmingham
The Cecilia Colman Gallery 67 St. Johns Wood St. London
The RBSA Gallery on St Pauls Sq. Birmingham, (at some individual exhibitions)
All year
www.centrepiece-jewellery.co.uk
www.craftmaker.co.ukAll Year
For further images of her work please see her website :- www.stather.net/memory
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