Robert Goldsworthy

These three pieces of enamel on copper are part of a series of wearable vessels which were exhibited at the “Habitats” exhibition at The Courtyard, Hereford. Rob studied Three-Dimensional Design at Hornsey College of Art in London in the early 1970’s and set up a silversmithing practice in Clerkenwell, London, sharing a studio and collaborating in projects with the engraver Stanley Reece. This was a period before he discovered the use of enamels during which his work was very much in monochrome. It was whilst he was undertaking a post-graduate MA at Birmingham’s School of Jewellery in 2015 that he began to experiment with a whole variety of processes and media which eventually resulted in using vitreous enamel with his experimentations. He now prefers to work with non-precious base metals as this means that the value of the substrate material no longer has a dominating factor in the piece. He has long been interested in the processes involved in traditional photography where you really don’t know whether or how a latent image has been recorded on a strip of emulsion covered film and the chemical processes that eventually produce an image in print. This element of emergent surprise is, for him, a crucial quality within an enamelled piece and gives him a freedom from the purely planned and executed that he had adhered to with his silversmithing work. This has recently encouraged him to use photographic images with enamelling by way of utilising transfers which are fired in the kiln. Recently, he has been experimenting with this process to transfer old family photographs which depict a personal family heritage of migration from the late eighteenth century resulting in a larger scale final piece which was exhibited last year.

Find Robert on his website.