Blue and White Enamelled Brooches Inspired by Pieces of Broken Pottery

These brooches are inspired by little pieces of broken china found locally in the fields and gardens of The Tamar Valley.

 “Dock Dung” of the Tamar Valley 

 In the 19th Century the night sweepings from the streets of Plymouth were gathered together and piled up at the docks to be taken up the River Tamar by barge to be used as fertiliser for the fruit crops. All sorts of rubbish from the streets was also transported such as glass bottles and old discarded china. Local people often find bits of broken china in their gardens (that were once fruit fields); these pieces of broken china are known as ‘Dock Dung’. Intrigued by these little pieces of china I set about painting them and learning some of the patterns. These pieces are inspired by the surface pattern and strong blue of many of the shards.

In these mixed metal pieces the enamel is painted, scratched and deliberately over fired to produce an obscured fragmented pattern. 

The. main part of the brooch is made from copper and the pin is made from steel. Each brooch has embellishments of silver and glass beads (apart from brooch 5 which has no silver parts).

The brooches are appromately 5-6 cm at their widest point.

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