Showcase & Discover Creative Work

Nellie Peoples is a designer-maker working in the field of jewellery and metalsmithing. Currently she is a design arts student in the Gold and Silversmithing Workshop at the School of Art, Australian National University.
With a history in design and architecture, she brings these two fields together through constant experimentation with line as a form and with attention to detailed precision.

All her designs begin with a process of sketching, technical drawings, mock-up models and computer modelling. Her processes continuously shift between paper and object making.

Line is constant throughout her practice. Adhering to this notion she pursues silver and goldsmithing to technical limits working close to the interface between chance and disaster where function can be a loosened ideal. However, precision is an overarching parameter and structure is a major component. All manipulations are still very controlled and are based on technical equations or rules.

In the body of a work, the line can be a layer, border, boundary, edge or a limit. To draw the attention back to the original line she uses different material finishes to accentuate the treatment of the edge. For example, a matt surface for the face/body and a polished or reflective edge allows light to run along it as if redrawing that edge. She also demonstrates the importance of certain lines by breaking up the layers or differentiating their thicknesses to emphasize the multiple roles in the meaning of the line.

With her introduction to design through architecture, the first materials she worked with were steel, wood and concrete. Industrial materials continue to be used her practice today to create jewellery and metalsmithing objects as they lend themselves to be machined with great accuracy and can be combined with more precious metals with precision.

Through hand and bench skills as the basis for all of her designs, her mantra is that the machine adds to construction rather than machine drives construction. Read Less