Sandra Austin
Artist Bio
Born and grew up in Porthleven, a small fishing village in the South West of Cornwall. Sandra now lives in the beautiful creekside village of Devoran, four miles south of Truro. Her love of design and creativity, and a passion for jewellery moved her away from a successful career in Oral Health Education to study silversmithing & jewellery at Truro College. In her final year she was awarded with the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths award and graduated with a first BA(Hons) degree in 2013. Sandra’s surroundings and its natural beauty are the main inspiration to her work. Aesthetics are carefully considered by the forms, shapes, moods and colour changes reflected in the sand and sea.
Photography is fundamental to Sandra’s design development helping her to study line and shape in more detail. She then sketches from the images, establishing the concept of the design. Often the drawings are then further developed by model making allowing for modification of design alternatives, proportion and textural detail before translating to metal. Sandra’s preferred ways of working are forming, raising and forging the metal. These traditional silversmithing techniques and experimentation allows her to produce flowing curved lines, giving each piece an organic fluid quality. Handmade chains with asymmetric designs run throughout her collections. Each link is cut and individually soldered. They are then shaped, formed and suspended into fascinating long lengths expressing fluid movement of shape and light with sculptural, linear qualities.
Sandra’s signature style and her aesthetic approach to her work has become easily recognised building a reputation for high quality, tactile and wearable pieces of jewellery. Working with golds and silver she often incorporates hand set opals, precious and semi precious gemstones. Sandra works from her studio at home. She also works to commission, designing and making bespoke, individual pieces.
