The highly successful Elements Festival – Scotland’s biggest celebration of jewellery, silver and gold – is staging its first ever event in Aberdeen this weekend.

While most of this year’s festival is digital, due to COVID-19, a series of pop-ups are taking place which will allow people to meet some of the finest emerging and established designers and makers from Scotland and the rest of the UK.  

This Saturday and Sunday Aberdeen Art Gallery will be hosting four Scottish makers selected for this year’s festival:

  • Christina Hirst
  • Ruth Leslie
  • Rhona McCallum
  • Emma Louise Wilson.

Emma returned from Glasgow to live and work in her native Aberdeen two years ago and the work she will have on show includes exquisite hand-made silver bowls, enamelled with designs inspired by the area’s dramatic skies and seascapes.

The makers are looking forward to the pop-up as an opportunity to meet the public and show their work – in a superb location.

Emma said: “It’s lovely to be able to have an in-person event like this, especially with the opportunity to show at the art gallery – it’s an absolutely stunning venue.

“I’m really looking forward to meeting people and showing them not just my finished work, but something of the process that goes into it, like the sketches I make after walking in places like Aberdeen beach and how these inspire my designs.”

Emma, who has loved enamelling since the age of 10, studied silversmithing and jewellery making at Gray’s School of Art. 

She is renowned for her fine silver and enamel jewellery, as well as hand raised bowls in fine silver or copper with enamel decoration. She uses traditional techniques like hand-raising and enamelling in a contemporary way, producing work which is beautiful and modern and something to be treasured.

Visitors will also be able to browse a dazzling array of jewellery and silver by three other makers and designers.

Edinburgh-based jeweller Ruth Leslie creates contemporary, sculptural jewellery in a variety of metals including silver, gold and titanium.

Christina Hirst, a jewellery maker from Leith, uses precious metal clay (PMC consists of minute metal particles suspended in an organic binder and water) which transforms into pure metal when fired in a kiln. 

Glasgow-based jeweller Rhona McCallum creates signature statement collections of contemporary jewellery, which are inspired by Scotland’s landscape, geology and history using recycled precious metals and ethically sources gemstones.  

Ebba Goring, Chief Executive of festival organisers The Scottish Goldsmiths Trust, said: “We are delighted to have the chance to come to Aberdeen to showcase some superb work by exceptional Scottish designers and makers – especially at a time when people will be looking for extra-special Christmas gifts.

“Elements has a well-deserved reputation for being the place to find some truly extraordinary work by some of the very finest emerging and established makers and designers.

“This year’s event blends the on-line and the in-person so that people can browse the gold, silver and jewellery at their leisure and in the way that suits them.”

Elements is organised by the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust in partnership with Lyon and Turnbull auctioneers. Elements brings together work from some of the finest established and emerging makers from Scotland and across the UK.

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Notes for editors

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  • Website: www.elementsfestival.co.uk

About the exhibitors

For more about the pop-up participants see:

About the Elements 2021 partners

  • The Scottish Goldsmiths Trust (SGT) was founded by The Incorporation of Goldsmiths of the City of Edinburgh in 2000.
  • The SGT has a dynamic programme of opportunities, exhibitions and educational resources.  
  • The SGT curates the Millennium Silver Collection, Silver of the Stars and the historical archives of The Incorporation.
  • It aims to promote and support the education, art and craft of Scotland’s gold and silversmithing heritage and trade. 
  • In recent years, their work has expanded with the creation of the Ethical Making Programme to support the adoption of responsible and sustainable practices in Jewellery and Silversmithing.
  • Established in Edinburgh in 1826, Lyon & Turnbull are Scotland’s oldest firm of auctioneers. In recent years Lyon & Turnbull has become one of the fastest growing independent auction houses in the UK. They have achieved this through innovative marketing, flexibility and dedication to personal service delivered by a team of specialists.  It has offices and representatives throughout the U.K. in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. 
  • Together with Samuel T. Freeman & Co, Philadelphia’s leading appraisers and auctioneers, they make a powerful transatlantic force in today’s auction world. Both Freeman’s and Lyon & Turnbull are now becoming identified on an international stage, setting world record prices for Scottish paintings and Asian works of art, along with outstanding results in other areas, such as jewellery, silver, furniture, ceramics, books and decorative arts. See http://www.lyonandturnbull.com

For information about SGT contact Ebba Goring Chief Executive on 0131 557 6938 or 07881 623 826 or [email protected]. For media information contact Matthew Shelley at SFPR on 07786704299 or [email protected].

scottishgoldsmithstrust.org

ethicalmaking.org

elementsfestival.co.uk

The Scottish Goldsmiths Trust, Clockwise Offices, FAO The Scottish Goldsmiths TrustCommercial Quay, 84 Commercial St, Leith, Edinburgh, EH6 6LX. The trust is a Registered Scottish Charity no. SC028384