Peer Designer: Amy Butler by Monique Conradie

Brief biography

Amy Butler was born on the 21st of June 1990. She grew up with her mother who did jewellery design and manufacture as a hobby. It was a great passion of her mother’s because she spent thousands of rands setting up her own workshop in one of the rooms in their house. Amy used to spend hours in the workshop with her mother watching her make all kinds of jewellery. At the age of six or seven her mother taught her how to make copper beads and Amy has been making jewellery ever since.

Over the years, Amy acquired a huge collection of real silver and costume jewellery. One of her friends once said that she could open up her own jewellery store with the amount of jewellery Amy had in her room.

Originally Amy had wanted to study and become an Occupational Therapist, but because she finds it hard to sit still and study, she decided to do something more practical and therefore chose Jewellery. She is currently in her third year studying Jewellery Design and Manufacture at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town.

Design Philosophy

Principle Concerns

Amy is trying to get people to be more aware of bigger issues in the world that affect them and everyone else in it by taking those issues and showing them in her designs

while still making her pieces look attractive and appealing for people to wear. Here are the first three of her designs relating to this topic.

Dead Flower Earrings

These earrings symbolise a lack of water for the growth of plantation. Amy is trying to show people what would happen to the beautiful plants that surround us if people carry on misusing water. I think that these earrings of wilted, bent over flowers are a very good symbol for this as the way they droop over almost looks like people with their heads hung evoking a feeling of despair.

Shriveled Up Leaf Ring

Yet again Amy is showing one of the devastating consequences of the lack of water for plantation. In this piece it shows a shriveled up leaf. The two brown stones set on either side represent the colour of a dead leaf. Perhaps this addition of colour also shows us how bland and dull the earth’s colours would be if we were to lose most of our plants.

Last Droplet Ball Pendant

In this pendant Amy is trying to show how precious every last drop of water is. She has made this pendant to be showing the last preserved droplet of water. I think she has designed this piece well because the fact that she has put the ‘droplet’ into a ‘safe’ ball gives you the thought of keeping the droplet safe and because it’s a pendant its almost as if she is trying to show that we should keep it close to our hearts. The fact that there are two half spheres cupping the ‘droplet’ reminds me of someone holding something tightly and safely in their hand. This is one of the things Amy would like people to do figuratively, keeping water safe, and that is why I think this piece works so well with what she is trying to bring across to the public.

Attitude to Design

Amy often struggles with her designing and ends up being demotivated. She enjoys finding interesting pictures and designing from them. She is especially inspired by images of movement and playfulness such as the movements and forms of water. When she is designing she prefers to make forms and shapes out of plasticine so she can see the three dimensional outcome of her designs. She prefers the more practical side to design otherwise she sometimes finds it hard to visualize her piece.

Themes

Her theme for this year is ‘To demonstrate, through a range of jewellery, several ecological issues concerning the Earth’s water crisis’. She also likes to design pieces that depict movement such as the flow of water. Another theme in some of her work is playfulness. She likes to add a bit of fun into her work when she can. Here are two examples of Amy’s more playful jewellery. The first piece is her ‘Superman Cufflinks’ and the second her ‘Flower Locket’. In the ‘Superman Cufflinks’ she used the shape around the ‘s’ sign that Superman wears as his symbol and she used the ‘s’ to make the Superman logo her own design. In the ‘Flower Locket’, Amy has used binding wire to roll press the shape of the flower. By not making the flower look exact to life, she evokes a sense of playfulness.

Aims and Aspirations

Next year Amy is planning on doing her fourth year of jewellery design and manufacture so that she can get her degree. After that she would like to work for a jeweller to get some experience and then she hopes to start her own business from home with the equipment she already has. Her ultimate goal however is to own her own shop and be able to work from home.

Influences

While Amy’s biggest influence has been her mother, she also finds inspiration in patterns, shapes, playfulness and the movement and flow of jewellery and objects. Amy is also inspired by people and their characteristics, personalities and habits and would like to maybe create a range of jewellery in the future using that as inspiration.

How do they plan to market themselves?

Amy intends to start off by starting a blog and posting her jewellery on there. From there she would like to try and sell her work at various jewellery shops that sell other designers jewellery. While she is doing her blog and selling her jewellery, she would like to showcase at some exhibitions and try and get her name out there as much as she can.

Use of materials

Amy uses a variety of different materials from sterling silver, gold, copper and brass to found objects, wood, resin, perspex and enamel to create her jewellery. She tries to add colour into her pieces with the non metal materials to bring a bit of fun and life into her work.

Techniques

Through her studies she has learnt a number of different techniques such as soldering, piercing, enameling, riveting, setting, fly pressing, roll pressing and repousse. Amy’s favourite technique though is piercing because of the intricate detail it can add to a piece. Recently with her ten piece project for her third year she tried water casting as an experiment and a bit of fun. Water casting is basically heating up the metal until melting point and then instead of pouring it into an ingot, you pour it into another crucible submerged in water. Here is a photograph of the metal after it has rapidly cooled down in the water.