Studio 1: Adored Links

Studio brief

Adored Links: adorable links. What do you adore? What makes things adorable? To adore historically means "to honour very highly" but has now turned into a much weaker idea of merely being fond. 

Links are connections forged between things. Connections forged between you and the things you value very highly or perhaps those things of which you are merely fond. This title challenges you to identify what you value: what you value a lot and what you value less, and to think about connections, what we associate or link and why? And what is in the neighbourhood, what surrounds it, what is in the near vicinity and what is far away. What do we link and why, and what would we never link together?

Studio structure

The studio starts with the process of developing ideas by researching historical sources, using your imagination and drawing on the contemporary world. You will go on to learn the tools, craft skills and techniques for making jewellery and silversmithing objects and how ideas originating in your imagination develop further in 2D. Finally, you will then handmake your own jewellery or artefacts as 3D objects.

The studio encourages you to draw on your own ideas, experiences and imagination, to use your own hinterland to discover the sorts of forms, materials and techniques you need to express and develop your own original voice and your own translation into 2D and 3D.  


The studio will provide briefs for specific projects either for all levels or second year. Third year students work to their own brief in semester two in order to generate a final-year body of work. However, there are opportunities to exercise the information they've learned within a given or self-initiated brief, with realisation phase for making. 

Participants will learn in different ways ranging from group talks, presentations and criticism to workshops, demonstrations and collaborations with other disciplines. You will develop your communication skills, as well as presenting your recent thinking on the topic by making pieces of jewellery or silversmithing objects. You will be supported in your learning with one-to-one tutorials. 

Studio project

Kick-start project: korn KAT-i-nate with Studio Fluent in Ornament 
CAA Project: The Magic • Stones; Links; Valentine's Day
A project with client brief
A project – set your own brief and make it (Please note, the sequence and order of the semester time plan could change)

Studio trip: Relevant places in London
Studio project partners: Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery