Elliptic Salt and Pepper dish

West Cornwall, England

Alex O’Connor came to silversmithing in 2013 from a background in Fine Art and Sculpture. Accordingly, her silverware merges an inherent understanding of form, composition, balance and surface with the specific disciplines of contemporary craft.

Based in West Cornwall, this elemental location has a profound influence on her practice. The colour of the sky, the wind-blown trees, the negative spaces between rocks, shadows, sounds. It’s these sensations that she looks to express in her work. The poetry of the landscape is important – the resilience and dynamism – but also the stillness, the solace. It’s a landscape that speaks of something ancient and atavistic.

Her recent collections are created through a process that begins with walking in the Cornish landscape and moves into drawing and model making. The resulting pieces bring together ideas of both our external and internal landscape.

‘The world is a beautiful place, filled with wonders, but also cacophonous, baffling, chaotic and overwhelming for me.

I convert these sensations into silverware and wearable sculptures that are suffused with harmony, composure, poise and serenity’

_Alex O'Connor

In 2019 Alex has exhibited at Collect and will be at Handmade Oxford and the Goldsmiths’ Fair, Week Two.