We often feature vintage jewellery design on the blog however, it’s usually of the Scandinavian variety. Today we’re spotlighting a home-grown jewellery designer, John Donald.
We learned about him on last week’s episode of Antiques Roadshow where a member of the public brought in a beautiful ring to be valued. Donald (b. 1928) was at the vanguard of 1960s and 70s British jewellery design, alongside other metalworking giants such as Gerald Benney, Stuart Devlin and Robert Welch.
He worked with precious and semi-precious materials including diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, amethyst, citrine, pyrite and quartz set in silver and gold. He describes the process of creating his honeycomb series (seen in the top two images in the montage above) in 1972:
This piece of cast honeycomb, in 18ct yellow gold and set gold bee and Mexican fire opals as honey drops, was achieved after considerable effort. In theory, casting from wax – the lost wax process – should be straightforward. This process was successfully created by craftsmen several thousand years ago. For this honeycomb, it took two years of constant experimentation by me with my assistant in order to produce a satisfactory piece.
The casting process is relatively simple; embed the wax object in a can of plaster, leaving a hole for the wax to drain away once it has been heated to a high temperature. Whilst the plaster is still very hot, the molten metal is poured into the space left by the wax. This is best assisted by atmospheric pressure or centrifugal force. But….. fresh honeycomb dries out very quickly, making cell walls too thin for metal to flow easily. Also, we discovered, in frustration, that molten gold will not flow through more than two right angles! This problem was partially overcome by attaching wax rods to the original honeycomb in order to facilitate the flow of metal.
This piece is the result of a ‘miscast’, where the bottom of each cell is missing, thus showing the structure of the cell behind. The idea for this piece originated from mythology: – Daedalus, the goldsmith, made a gold honeycomb with seven gold bees for his son, Icarus, as a wedding present.
John Donald has numerous famous fans and customers, including the late Princess Margaret and author, Barbara Taylor Bradford.
I can’t afford any of his exquisite jewellery – perhaps I could stretch to buying a copy of Precious Statements. John Donald: designer and jeweller – his monograph, currently available at the pretty price of almost £90.00.
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