Between April and June, the brilliant 1st Year BA students at The School of Jewellery in Birmingham, where Laura studied – a few years ago now! – have been working on a brief set in collaboration with Just Trade.
The challenge was to demonstrate their creative flair and inventive use of materials by turning ‘Jumble’ into ‘Jewels’ within two categories… Industrial Crunch and Luxus Vintage, very much embracing the ethos of Just Trade.
Once the students had selected their category, they were given a bag to fill with materials from their appropriate pile:
Industrial Crunch – Scrap materials from industry, parts of machinery, broken components, screws, nuts, bolts, abandoned and malfunctioning equipment alongside crunchy natural materials such as seeds/ nuts/ shells…
Luxus Vintage – Old books, magazines, wood, furniture, dusty forgotten relics and all things vintage alongside broken and scrap costume jewellery and metal.
The finished presentation was to include a large scale catwalk piece, and a smaller and more affordable diffusion line. The results were incredible. The winner was chosen by the Just Trade team here in London… which was super difficult as the range of talent was truly impressive.
We finally narrowed it down to a short list of eight! With the runners up being….
Industrial Crunch Runners Up:
2nd Place – Elsa Qing Qing Zhang
3rd Place – Yuna Choy
Luxus Vintage Runners Up:
2nd Place – Amber Copper-Green & Vanessa Poon
3rd Place – Yu Zhang & Holly Clifford
However there could only be one overall winner in the each category and a couple of entries really caught the attention of every member of the Just Trade team, not only with the aesthetic but the noticeable hard work behind each piece.
WINNER OF INDUSTRIAL CRUNCH – Xu Luojun
“We were very impressed with the in depth investigation of Xu’s projects. We loved the way that she had created her own material and then pushed the boundaries of what it was capable of. We are already thinking of what alchemy we can get her to perform in the studio here at Just Trade. – Laura Cave
WINNER OF LUXUS VINTAGE – Danielle Villiers
Danielle presented a well researched, well developed and well presented body of work. The final outcomes were beautifully considered and she was the unanimous winner in this category. We are very much looking forward to having Danielle work with us next year. – Laura Cave
The winners won a glorious Just Trade creation, courtesy of our very own Sophie Todd.. and an internship next summer down in Peckham.
