Organic overview - Liz Oliver

The Art of Jewellery Design by Liz Oliver has an interesting overview of the organic concept (2002:98-103). Olver explains that ‘organic’ refers to work that is derived from nature that influences the jeweller's inspiration, materials, process and design.

Inspiration for almost everything has an element that can be found in nature including shapes, textures, materials, colours and forms. Nature can stimulate all our senses which fuel the design process by sparking inspiration. For example, the taste is stimulated by flavours and food, smell by floral scents, hearing by animal calls, touch by textures and sight by patterns. I would say sight is the sense that influences my inspiration.

The design process can be described as organic even if the final design does not resemble anything organic. Letting the design evolve during the creative process and making it more random adds to the natural feel of organic jewellery. "Organic forms can be immortalized through processes such as casting and electroforming,"(2002:100) I have done this by casting plants and it can be seen in figure 1 where sycamore seed pods were cast and used in a brooch.

Curvaceous lines and abstract forms are seen as natural. Figure 2 is an example of leaves that were used to design abstract natural forms to create jewellery pieces. Even though there is a lot of examples of symmetry in nature there is probably an equal amount of asymmetry which is why I chose organic jewellery. I do not like making symmetrical jewellery because I find it is almost impossible to create symmetrical or identical jewellery pieces as no two pieces are ever the same.

Figure 1- Olver, L.,(2002).
Cast silver seed pods brooch with stones 

Figure 2 - Olver, L., (2002). abstract jewellery forms