Jeweller Profile: Jo McAllister
'The Ring Cycle' is a new and ongoing body of work to satisfy the ideas led strand of my practice. Exuberant, narrative, mainly larger scale rings based on words that end in '...ring'. So far I have made one or more pieces to illustrate feathering, flowering, powdering, conjuring, towering and conkering. Conquering is on the list, but going conkering is more fun. I have a long list of '...ring' words that I add to all the time. Obviously some words lend themselves more readily to interpretation and I will make more than one ring for words such as feathering, flowering and towering. The intention is to select five or six new words a year.
It was interesting to show these rings en masse for the first time at Goldsmiths' Fair 2015. For the PV and the first day or so I had them out on top of my cabinet where they were much admired, but I felt like comedy central - people were having a good laugh and wandering off. Half way through day two I switched my work around, putting the rings inside the bottom of a small countertop cabinet and placing my 18ct gold Honesty Seed collection out on top. This was a positive move as people looked at my design led work which is generally more wearable, then if they were looking closely they were amused by The Ring Cycle pieces.
I had chosen 'Powdering' as my catalogue piece on the grounds that it was unlikely that there would be another wearable powder pot complete with miniature velvet and satin powder puff. This attracted a curator to my stand and our conversation made me view the individual rings more holistically. The result was that Feathering No 1, the first piece in The Ring Cycle, was acquired for the Alice and Louis Koch Collection and will be housed in Switzerland alongside rings spanning 4,000 years that have been collected over four generations. I am absolutely thrilled and I feel incredibly honoured to be included in such a prestigious collection - definitely the highlight of my jewellery year!
