How I became a kiltmaker

You might not have discovered this about me yet, but I love to sew! When I started doing custom jewellery shows (just pre-covid, sadly), I decided I needed some textile additions to my show display. And so I made these two mini quilts:

When I was thinking about moving back to Toronto, and what I was going to do with my career, I started thinking about my love of sewing, and how I might make some aspect of that into my business. While I love to quilt, I didn’t want it to become work!

Around that time, I reconnected with a friend in Edinburgh that happens to be a kiltmaker. We were chatting, and she happened to mention that they were starting up a kiltmakers academy to train the next generation of kiltmakers. You see, the art of traditional, handmade kilts was being lost, as knowledge was being lost or degraded over time. So, the idea was to develop a program that was a professional, technical designation, and bring some consistency of making to the craft again.

I love to hand sew, and there are a lot of Scots in Canada! So, I thought this might be useful . So, I spent 4 months of intensive Saturdays learning to make kilts on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

Here are a few examples of the kilts I made as part of the course. I had to complete a total of six kilts to graduate, including a child’s kilt, a military box pleat, an asymmetric tartan, a heavy weight tartan and a plain cloth kilt. In addition, I had to learn how to do alterations. It was a great course, and gave me a baptism by fire of most aspects of kiltmaking. I know about making pipers’ kilts and dancer kilts as well, although I didn’t have to make one to complete the course.

I feel very prepared to embark on my new journey as a traditional Scottish Kiltmaker!

Looking for an heirloom quality kilt? Or to have that kilt you grandparent handed down to you? Contact me for more information, and let’s talk!

Toronto Outdoor Art Fair 60 years

It’s certainly been an interesting time of late. I was just sort of getting my jewellery practice off the ground, and the pandemic hit. I had some big plans for shows and development in 2020 that, well, mostly didn’t happen. Certainly, even in 2021, alot of the shows are not really occurring, although alot of virtual events have popped up. I haven’t been participating in them, but I did apply to the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, which is a juried show.

You may or may not know about these things, but as a relatively junior goldsmith (in terms of length of career so far!), it’s a pretty big deal for me to get into a juried show.  Honestly, I think even when I’m old and grey(er), I’ll still get a big charge out of it, that’s just kind of the way I am!

Me, looking excited, you just can’t tell, because I’m wearing a mask :). Actually, it’s from a while ago, as I found out in April, but I was very excited the day I found out!

What’s a juried show? you say.  Well, a juried show means that the show/sale/exhibition is curated, and there is a competitive process involved in being accepted to participate.  You have to tell them who you are and what you’re about, you need to submit professional looking images of your work and say what you will be exhibiting/selling.  Then a panel of people looks at all the applicants and judges you (eek!). I find it a bit nerve wracking, even though it’s not (usually) an in-person process.  You just have to wait for the answer about whether you’ve been accepted or not to eventually pop up in your email. (To be honest, this is shorter than in science—I’ve written research grants that take up to a year to get an answer about, art/craft shows are usually a couple or a few months—thankfully for my finger nails!!)

The show takes place July 2nd-11th, with lots of great programming. And…..all the artists profiles are up now, so you can browse already, you just can’t buy until the show goes live! I’m pretty happy with my profile- you can see it here. I am featuring a couple of things that you can see on my shop page, but it does mostly have new work, or work that you might not have see before, so I think it’s worth checking out!

I hope you’ll join us for this legacy event! Engage with artists, browse curated collections, enjoy art talks, studio tours, and buy art from 400+ juried artists at TOAF.ca

I will be doing some special videos and social media during the show, so I hope that you will check out my instagram and facebook pages! Drop me a line if there is anything you’d specifically like to know about!

Hope to hear and/or see you soon! Stay safe!

-Robin

Small business, big picture

I rather quietly like the holidays. I’m not necessarily one for crowds, and to be honest, I’ve always favoured shopping in local, small and artisanal shops for gifts, rather than big box stores. Yes, it often is more expensive , but I really value the thought that goes behind presents, not the volume. I know not everyone feels the same, and that’s totally valid, nor can you necessarily get everything local, but this is my ask for the season (as a small business person and artist), please consider shopping locally, and choosing to support both local businesses and artists.

Last week, Roncevalles (which is where the studio I am a member of is located) ran a mini campaign to try and bring some visibility to the neighbourhood and the reality of the current situation.

Overnight, participating stores and businesses down Roncevalles were papered with these kraft paper “For Lease” signs. Come mid-day, they were taken down and replaced with positive slogans like “Your support is never for lease” “Give Roncy a new lease on life” and “Our love in not for lease”

We’ve been touched at the studio by the people that have gotten in touch with words of support, equiries about custom work and workshops, and interest in knowing more about the studio. Although we really value and need financial support through active shoppers, we also value word-of-mouth (or, word-of-internet!) exposure too, as that helps bring more visibility and awareness of who and what we are . You can join the newsletter, suggest the site to your friends, or forward a newsletter, lave a review, share an instagram or facebook post, verbally tell people you know about a favourite site (preferably mine :). All of these actions cost nothing but a bit of thought and time, but are immensely helpful!

Anyway, I think that is it for me this week, I’m off to do a bit of online browsing to try and finish my Christmas shopping!! Stay safe, please follow the guidelines, and I’ll see you next week!

-Robin.

Old jewellery, new jewellery

I’ve been hard at work doing a number of custom pieces, which I can’t really share at the moment, as they’re not completed yet, but I did complete a couple of pieces recently that I wanted to share with you. It’s fun when a client brings me their old jewellery that they want to reimagine into new pieces.

Re-imaging jewellery you have is a good way to retain materials, but give them a new lease on life! I feel so happy to be involved in helping to remodel so many meaningful pieces!

I removed the central stone from the ring, and made it into a new bezel set floating pendant in 14k white gold. It looks stunning! The rest of the stones will go to be used in other pieces, and the gold was recycled in another piece as well!

Here, I removed the side stones (so the central stone can be used somewhere else!), and remade them into these sweet, delicate earrings, also in 14k white gold. The gold from the ring was reclaimed.

So, do you have any jewellery lurking around that you want to give a new lease on life ? Get in contact and let’s start a dialogue about remodeling your jewellery—all quotes are no-obligation and free!

Happy Sunday!

-Robin.

Construction of a New Piece

As an independent goldsmith, I make a fair number of pieces that are small batch productions, so, while they are all unique in their own way, they’re still of a similar design, and generally use similar methods.  Part of my practice, to keep exercising my creative muscles is to challenge myself to make larger pieces on a semi-regular basis.  Last year, I made this piece:

Oxidised sterling silver, 10k yellow gold, blue topaz and sapphire necklace with roller printed elements and two-tone blue needled felt. This necklace is very kinetic, and hangs about 19" long.

If you’re familiar with some of my work, you’ll see that it incorporates a lot of different elements from other pieces that I’ve made, but puts them together in a new and more elaborate way, incorporating some gold and more precious gems than I might normally use.  (If you're interested in more information about why I use these elements, you can read a bit more here.)

This year, I set myself a similar goal: to make a larger, statement piece, that incorporates a lot of elements that I normally use, in a larger format, and incorporating or extending my skills at the same time.  This piece presented some challenges for me, in terms of the physical construction, because I couldn’t use a lot of my normal techniques to create the individual pieces.  This made it a lot of fun (I like practical problem solving/troubleshooting), but also rather frustrating at times. 

Some pictures of the necklace in process

starting to put the elements together

One down, one that needs alot of laser welding to get it together!

Just the finishing to go!

This necklace is part of my sci/art collections, and is entitled Invaders/Defenders. Since it is more specifically an art jewellery piece, the design is associated with different symbolism for me.  The piece has two different finishes.  The oxidised/dark element represents the infectious invaders, with the mostly oval cabochon sapphires being reminiscent of a bacterial shape, and the random placement showing some of the disorder that happens in the infection process.  In contrast, the matte silver/light element represents the immune cells that defend against infection and disease, with the incorporation of texture and irregular cutouts. The more organic nature of the circular shape of the two larger elements reflect the cellular/tissue environment where these biological entities interact, and the two elements are united in a continuous loop with a steel cable, as the different sides of this process are irrevocably linked in biology.

The final piece and an impression of the scale. The two main elements are made of sterling silver, with sapphire cabochons, roller printed elements, seed freshwater pearl beads, and deep blue needled felt.

I’m really pleased with the overall effect of the piece, what do you think?  Would you be interested in some smaller pieces in a similar style of one of the elements, perhaps as a brooch or a pendant?

You can contact me here to start a dialogue about this piece, and commission a new work.  I look forward to your comments.

Have a great Sunday!

-Robin

Covid, Immunology and Jewellery

I thought I’d share a window display that I did just at the beginning of Lock down in Toronto.  Little did I know when I agreed to do the display that it would be relevant to the current situation, so I thought I’d talk today about where you can find some information that might better help you understand how your body fights infections, like COVID-19, as well as a bit about the genesis of my collection.

As you may know (or not), I have a PhD in immunology, the very important part of physiology that protects the body (or “host”) against infection, and some diseases.  As I’m sure you’ll agree, in our current crisis, it’s particularly relevant to the concerns on everyone’s mind about COVID-19.  I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail about information about the immune system here, there are a lot of good pages like this Canada.ca webpage that will give you give information. Or the British Society for Immunology has this great series of pages called “Bite sized Immunology” which breaks a lot of different concepts into understandable sections with some colourful graphics to help make things more comprehensible.

Basically, the immune system is your own personal army that protects the body (to the best of its ability!) against infection (among other things).  At its most basic, you can think of it being composed of two parts, the initial, less specific response that is immediate and a delayed response that is much more specific for an individual infectious agent, but it takes a while to kick in. It is the latter response that is what vaccination takes advantage of to confer protection against productive infection. Once you’ve been vaccinated, your immune system effectively goes straight to the specific response for that invader, quickly and effectively killing it off before it is able to exponentially reproduce in the body (or, if you like, stopping it in its tracks!).

One of the interesting things about cells in general, and immune cells in particular, is that you can stain them with coloured dyes that make the smaller structures in the cell more visible.  This allows visibility, and identification by shape, stain colour, and appearance:

A blood smear stained with two dyes, the light red cells are, not surprisingly, red blood cells (with their characteristic “donut” appearance). The violet and purple cells are cells of the immune system.

Different kinds of immune cells

I’ve always been fascinated by the shapes of stained blood cells, I find them visually interesting, as well as artistically inspiring. About 10 years ago, I first had my inspiration for the current collection of different jewellery pieces. I was at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, working as a Research Fellow, and the Veterinary School wanted to put on an art show. I wanted to participate, since it combined my two passions (art and science!), and after alot of sketching, I had a whole host of ideas. Ultimately, the exhibition didn’t happen, but the ideas never went away!

Fast forward to last year, and I started seriously working on new pieces combining my love of immune cells and my love of textiles! If you were out and about in April, you might have seen a selection of pieces on display. It’s not on anymore, so you’ll have to be satisfied with my pictures!

Window with “L” series jewellery

(The “L” stands for lymphocyte)

Centre piece: “Defense of Life” combines both “M” and “L” units. Made out of sterling silver with a central 10kt yellow gold ring with rubies and an orange sapphire, and orange and red needle felt, this piece was originally designed to be an exhibition piece. Many of my other pieces are composed of elements that make up this special showpiece.

Window with “M” series jewellery

(The M stands for macrophage)

Visit my shop page to see more of the pieces that are available for sale, or contact me to talk about a design just for you!

Of course, I’m not a Public Health person, but I can help with questions about immunology in general, or point you in the direction of where to find good, reliable information about the pandemic, you just need to ask! I always find that information helps to lessen panic and fear, which we could all do with less of in this situation (panic and fear, not information!).

So, stay safe, stay healthy, and hope to see you soon!

-Robin.

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The Hand Medal Project

Well, hard to believe, but yesterday there was snow in Toronto!  I can’t believe that winter is coming already.

There’s been a lot happening in the world recently, and sometimes it’s difficult to know what to do, and it’s easy to feel like you need to find some way to contribute.  This is a bit about one of the things I’ve elected to participate in. (I have been making a lot of cloth masks!!)

One of my colleagues sent me a link to something called the Hand Medal Project. You can see lots of photos on their dedicated instagram account. It recently wrapped up the maker phase, so it seemed like a good time to talk about it a little.

Some finished medals

What’s that you say?  You can read some nice things about it at the link, but it’s essentially about community recognising the amazing and vital efforts that health care workers have made to all of us during the Covid-19 outbreak. 

The idea is that jewellers around the world volunteer to make little metal medals in the shape of a hand, with a little ribbon, which will then be distributed to health care workers.  All the makers have a registered number, so that the recipients can find out who made their hand, if they want to.

Cutting out in copper

There are a lot of things that appealed to me about the project.  The hands are a tangible recognition from the community of contribution, as well as a memory of this period of time.  I also like the idea that they will be given out to workers by their peers and own community. Of course, my secret hope is that so many people participate, and that we make soooooo many medals, that everyone who “should” get one, can have one. I’m not sure how realistic that is, but it’s good to have goals! Especially since I didn’t quite manage to do as many as I aimed to (those little fingers were definitely challenging to get between to finish!!)

Working on finishing

My hope is that you are all staying healthy, listening to the government and healthcare experts, and following the guidance that they are recommending in this time, by being mindful of physical distancing from others and wearing face masks.  Let’s all do our part to keep each other safe and healthy and keep from spreading infection.  The more we do this, the sooner we will all be able to get back to some semblance of the life we’d rather have.

Have a great week!

-Robin 

Re-learning Toronto, and finding inspiration in architecture

I notice a lot of things, and I like looking at a lot of different sceneries.  One of my favourite (but not often enough exercised) things, is landscape photography.  In contrast, I’ve also always enjoyed looking at urban landscapes and appreciate intricate and interesting architecture.

As some of you may know, I lived in the UK for some time.  While there, I had the privilege of doing a fair amount of traveling.  One of the things I love to do when I visit new places is to wander the city/ lanscape, exploring and soaking in the visual appearances. Here are some of my (very few of them) favourite buildings:

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-qksky

Casa Battlo, Barcelona

https://www.flickr.com/photos/54771565@N03/43396063012

Musee D’Orsay, Paris

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MuseeOrsay_20070324.jpg

I could show you a gazillion more, but I don't have that kind of time to track down all my photos! But here's just one more of a typical architectural feature that I used to constantly see around Scotland.

Crow-stepped Gable, Scotland

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crow-stepped_gable,_Crail_-_geograph.org.uk_-_950435.jpg

When I first moved back to Toronto, I spent alot of time wandering the city getting to know it again. It was an incredible experience for me, and I spent alot of time just looking (and a little bit of capturing!). These are some of the things that have particularly caught my eye:

Now all of those shapes and features are rolling around somewhere in the back of my brain. Eventually, I'll start sketching some new pieces based on all these features, and from there, develop them into new jewellery. Not sure when, but they'll appear eventually. When they do, you can be sure that I'll share them with you!

Intrigued? I know I am! I never quite know what my brain is going to come up with until it appears. Some things are like a bolt of lightning, others are like this--they need a certain amount of work before they become real designs!

Stay safe and healthy, and I look forward to seeing you all when society is more open again. Want to connect sooner than that? Email me, let’s start a conversation! Or find me on Instagram .

-Robin

The Earring Show 2020

As some of you may know, I haven’t been in “business” for long yet. So, as you might imagine, Covid-19 is not really helping me! I’ve already had to forgo participating in one show (which hopefully will still happen in the Autumn-so more info on that in the future!), and I was due to start teaching workshops at the Jewel Envy studio, where I am a resident goldsmith, both of which have somewhat derailed the progress I was hoping to make this year. However, in the midst of all my doom and gloom, back in late March, I had a glimmer of excitement!

Part of my professional development this year is to apply to exhibitions (where and when I can!). I had put in an application in early March to the Craft Council BC to participate in their annual Earring Show exhibition. To my delight, I was accepted! Of course, it was supposed to be a physical exhibit, which is not now happening. But the Council was very proactive, and they’ve managed to organise an exciting virtual event on Zoom and Facebook ths Satuday, May 9th, 2020.

It’s a tough time for all of us, but attending (and telling your friends about it!) the event is a good way to support artists and local business-and who knows, you might find something you love in the exhibition (everything will be available for sale from the day of the exhibition).

These are my earrings that are featured in the exhibition-They’re my Asymmetric M form earrings. Made out of sterling silver and needle felt (I love the pop of colour and the contrasting texture the felt pad gives these pieces!), they’re one of a kind (although I do small production of this design), and because of the construction, they’re very light to wear, but still make a statement.

This is another version of my earrings. These are inspired by the macrophage/monocyte cell of the immune system (yes, I am a science geek!). When they are stained, they have cool nucleus shapes, which inspire the cutouts I make in my pieces. Although I reproduce this design, each pair of earrings are one-of-a-kind, as I handcut the domes using one-use hand-drawn templates, the elements are placed slightly differently on the curved wires, the felt inserts are available indifferent colours, and the earrings are available in different finishes. They retail for $180 (CAD) + HST. Fancy a pair? Email me to order

Hope to “see” you this Saturday!

-Robin

Welcome to my new site!

Hi there!

Welcome to my my new website-the place to find out more about House of Cassady, and my activities as a Goldsmith and Scottish Kiltmaker. In the coming days I will do a series of posts that talk more in detail about what I do, and insights about some of my methods. If you have any questions, drop me an email!