Joe Spurgeon of The Horrors Is Designing Imperfect, Brutalist Jewelry
As he launches his first assortment, the drummer of the British rock band talks about embracing imperfection in his rugged jewelry designs
- Who’s it? The eponymous jewelry design studio from The Horrors’ drummer Joe Spurgeon
- Why do I would like it? Handmade sculptural items which might be an ode to the great thing about life’s imperfections
- The place can I discover it? joespurgeon.com
Who’s it? After 14 years because the drummer for rock band The Horrors, Joe Spurgeon was on the lookout for a artistic outlet aside from music, which nonetheless concerned working together with his arms. Intimately tactile in each course of and design, jewelry spoke to the designer because the natural answer. “I just like the tactility,” he says. “I imply, I’m a drummer, so I suppose there’s this identical sense with jewelry of being in management together with your arms.” Earlier this yr, after three years spent mastering the craft, Spurgeon launched his eponymous jewelry design studio.
Jewelry design wasn’t a wholly overseas foray for Spurgeon; in 2005, he began a BA in Style at Kingston Faculty of Artwork in London, the place he first found the superb craft. Across the identical time, nevertheless, the designer joined The Horrors – and with the band’s fast rise to success, his research needed to be placed on maintain. “It was one or the opposite actually. And the band was most likely extra interesting at that time,” he says, with fun. However in 2019, Spurgeon determined to mud off his curiosity in design and undertook a course in jewelry and wax carving at Central Saint Martins.
Throughout the consecutive lockdowns of the pandemic, the jewelry challenge rapidly turned a meditative observe – an escape from actuality with a grounding finality: the satisfaction of getting crafted a “wearable type of artwork”. On this sense, music and jewelry exist as two separate artistic realms for Spurgeon. “Music for me feels barely countless. It’s one thing that you could possibly carry on going with endlessly,” he explains. “With jewelry, I can shut the ebook. When it’s carried out, it’s carried out. And I can transfer on.”
The designer’s first assortment Cinder is the mesmerising results of each these years spent experimenting with method and his affected person commentary of his seaside environment on his each day walks from house to studio. Utilizing the evolutionary technique of coastal erosion as a conceptual base, he artfully toys with jewelry’s relationship with time. As a substitute of a refined timelessness that’s typical of jewelry design, Spurgeon’s creations emphasise the wonder in imperfection and encourage the wearer to let the piece bear the marks of a life lived.
Why do I would like it? Balancing the textured intricacies of his designs with brutalist-informed laborious edges, Spurgeon crafts sculptural items of an otherworldly magnificence which might be designed to turn into an extension of the wearer. Every creation right down to the O-rings is handmade utilizing the 5,000-year-old strategy of misplaced wax carving; the items are forged in stable metallic from a hand-carved wax mould. “They’re designed in order that you’re sporting them,” says the designer of his items’ distinct weightiness that attracts the wearer’s consideration to the interaction of pores and skin, jewelry, and their environment.
Though the designer works with silver and gold, bronze is Spurgeon’s materials of alternative as its composition lends itself so completely to the concept of discovering magnificence in well timed imperfection. “Typically, once I make the jewelry, I current it in a clear and glossy kind, and I let the individual know that over time that may change,” explains the designer. “However I discover that it’s fairly romantic that it adjustments over time relying on what you’re doing. Life isn’t good in any method and bronze displays that.”
Simply as his designs are visually suggestive of craggy rock surfaces worn at by ocean tides, Spurgeon embraces erosion in his technical course of. The designer polishes the skin of the jewelry however doesn’t contact the deep, textured elements. With time, a distinction develops between the 2 because the internal surfaces “turn into actually darkish and the bits on the skin that you just’re rubbing in opposition to your trousers by chance keep a bit shinier and be extra vulnerable to oxidation.”
For his subsequent assortment, Spurgeon is engaged on setting stones inside the present designs. “It’s going to be like a journey,” says the designer. “That is the beginning, and the following bit will likely be adapting the designs and including a couple of new items.” Given his distinctive alchemical and sculptural strategy to jewelry, Spurgeon’s journey will definitely be one to observe as he continues his ode to the great thing about life with all its imperfections.
The place can I discover it? joespurgeon.com.
