I've been making jewellery for more than thirty years (true story!). Over those years I've created over a thousand different designs, explored all sorts of materials and techniques, and developed some enduring fascinations with particular shapes, patterns and motifs.

When I started thinking about how to mark thirty years as a jeweller, I knew I wanted to create a special collection. Rather than starting entirely from scratch, I decided to look back through my earlier work and revisit some of the ideas and pieces that have been important to me along the way.

For the most part, I didn't want to simply reproduce old jewellery designs. I wanted to see what would happen if I approached those familiar ideas in a fresh way, keeping in mind what I've learned and what's changed in my working processes since I first created them. That meant rethinking how some pieces were made, finding new ways to work with favourite patterns, and occasionally solving some quite tricky design problems.

The result is our 30th Anniversary Jewellery Range: a collection of new pieces with roots stretching back through three decades of making jewellery. Some have a clear resemblance to their predecessors, while others have evolved into something quite different.

I've written separately about what I've learned from thirty years of jewellery making and the experiences that have shaped my work. Here, I want to share the stories behind just a few of the designs in the anniversary collection, and how they came to take their new forms.

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Blossoms Jewellery: Thousands of Little Flowers

For many years some of my most popular jewellery designs featured little sterling silver blossoms. They were simple, cheerful shapes, but they were surprisingly labour-intensive to make. Every flower was individually cut by hand from silver sheet using a jeweller's saw, then filed, sanded and polished. The blossoms were then assembled into finished jewellery pieces. The most loved of these designs was a pair of dangle earrings featuring three of these little flowers on each earring.

I must have made thousands of those tiny blossoms over many years. To start the process I'd glue a piece of paper printed with blossoms onto silver sheet, drill holes in the centre of each flower, then saw each one out. Afterwards, I'd soak the flowers in water to remove the remaining paper before cleaning up the metal.

At some point I started saving the little paper cut-outs. I liked the shapes, and they seemed too interesting to throw away. Over the years I accumulated an enormous collection of them. Eventually I threaded hundreds of them onto silk thread, creating a strange necklace of paper blossoms. I thought it might become an art jewellery piece one day - perhaps something about the ghosts of all that repetitive production work. I still have it.

The blossom jewellery was enormously popular, but eventually I retired the designs. Making so many individual flowers had become a tiresome amount of repetitive work, however much I liked the finished pieces. I just had to stop.

When I began developing the 30th Anniversary Jewellery Range, I knew I needed to bring the blossoms back given they'd been such a key part of makign jewellery for so long. However, I really didn't want to return to the old way of making them. The new designs retain those familiar little flowers, now joined together in a row rather than individually cut out. However, I have recreated those much-loved Three Blossoms Dangle Earrings, but with production changes that save me a lot of repetitive work.

Thirty years of jewellery making has taught me that the challenge isn't always about coming up with a new idea: sometimes it's about finding a better way to make an old one. Here are a couple of the new blossoms jewellery pieces.

Garden Botanicals Necklaces: An Old Favourite Reimagined

Many years ago I came across a collection of old Japonisme patterns, probably dating from the Victorian era. They were long, narrow decorative designs, likely from an old catalogue or pattern book. I've always loved the way the Victorians collected and isolated interesting decorative elements, and these patterns were exactly the sort of thing that appealed to me.

I used several of them to create a range of etched silver pendants, each featuring a different pattern. They were all made in the same way, but one botanical design with a red silk necklace proved far more popular than the others. It became a longstanding bestseller, and I continued making it for years after the other designs had disappeared from the range.

Eventually, I retired it. Much as I loved the design, I'd made more than enough of those pendants! Even so, people continued asking about it years after it left the range.

When I started planning the anniversary range, this seemed like an obvious design to revisit. But I didn't want to just reproduce the original etched pendant. I'd always felt that the original artwork could be improved, and I was intrigued by the possibility of transforming the pattern into intricate cut-out silver instead.

That turned out to be quite a puzzle. The original artwork wasn't great quality, and a design that works as an etched pattern on a solid sheet of silver doesn't necessarily work as openwork. So I spent many hours redrawing and simplifying the artwork, zooming in to adjust tiny details and making sure the delicate sections would be strong enough to cast successfully.

Even after all that work, I wasn't entirely sure how the finished pieces would turn out. Would the intricate details survive the casting process? And after so many changes, would the design still look like the old favourite I'd loved?

I was so pleased when I finally saw it finished in silver. The new Garden Botanicals necklace is recognisably descended from the original, but the open spaces give the pattern a completely different character. Some of the things that had always bothered me about the old artwork have finally been resolved, too.

I've used rose garnet beads in one of the new necklaces as a nod to the vivid red silk thread of the original, but in a softer, darker wine colour. It's a design I've known well for many years, but I think I like this version even more.

Jumping Fish Necklace: Back to the Beginning

The earliest piece of metalwork jewellery I designed entirely myself was a jumping fish pendant, made while I was studying jewellery and metalwork in the 1990s. It was a particularly important piece to me, so I knew it had to be represented somehow in my anniversary range.

The original design came about because of an assignment to make something combining silver and anodised titanium. I loved the extraordinary deep blues that titanium could produce, particularly a rich, almost lapis lazuli blue. Thinking about that colour led me to water, which led me to fish.

I remember sitting in the campus library when I sketched the basic design - it came together surprisingly quickly. Although I refined it afterwards, the curved shape and cut-out details remained much as I'd originally drawn them.

When I finished making the pendant, I felt very proud of it. It was the first piece of complex metal jewellery I'd made using a design that was entirely my own. More importantly, it made me realise that perhaps I really could do this whole jewellery-making thing. I wore it for years afterwards.

For the new range, I wanted to retain the graphic, stylised character of the original fish while giving it a more flowing, naturalistic appearance. The first version has an angular, very 1990s look, while the new design has softer curves and a greater sense of movement. Oddly enough, I think it manages to look both more contemporary and more vintage than its predecessor. I've made a version of the pendant featuring dark blue sapphire beads as a deliberate nod to the original titanium.

I truly have no idea how many people might want jewellery featuring a jumping fish, but this particular design was never really about predicting what customers might like. It was about acknowledging a piece of jewellery that helped set me on the path I've been following for thirty years. See more of my student work and object artworks.

Damask: Finding Something New in an Old Pattern

I've always been a bit obsessed with ornament and decoration. As a child I was fascinated by the intricate patterns on wallpapers, which seemed to be everywhere back in the day. I remember tracing the shapes and flourishes with my eyes, following the details and figuring out how the patterns worked and repeated.

Many years later, I came across an elaborate damask design that immediately appealed to me. I don't remember where I found it, but I made sure to save a copy. It had the dense, ornate character of damask patterns, but with an unusually varied collection of stylised flourishes and decorative details. I loved it and soon began finding ways to incorporate it into my jewellery.

Over the years, that one design appeared in all sorts of jewellery pieces - from etched silver pendants and earrings to cufflinks and other pieces. Sometimes it was a backdrop to a more complex design, other times it was the main feature. It became so familiar that I could recognise individual flourishes almost anywhere.

For the anniversary range, I wanted to do something different. Instead of using the damask as a decorative element etched onto silver, I decided to make the pattern itself the main feature of the jewellery.

I moved an oval shape around the original artwork until I found an area that captured some of my favourite details. Then came the painstaking work of simplifying and adapting the intricate shapes so they could be made as openwork silver without losing their character in the process.

I'm really pleased with how this pendant turned out. After years of using the design almost like wallpaper, I love seeing a tiny fragment of it brought into focus and given a life of its own. Details that might easily disappear into the larger pattern have become the most important part of the piece.

Swallow Jewellery: A Childhood Fascination

When I was a little girl, I was fascinated by the tiny blue swallow necklaces I'd see some other girls wearing. I loved the combination of the beautiful blue enamel and the distinctive shape of the flying birds. I desperately wanted someone to give me a little blue swallow necklace of my own, but nobody ever did!

Those little swallows stayed in my imagination, and many years later I decided to create my own interpretation of this traditional jewellery design. I wanted something distinctly handmade, so I began with simple swallow silhouettes cut out of sterling silver sheet.

The first designs featured swallow-shaped openings in hammer-textured rectangular silver panels, which I made into earrings. But the tiny silver birds I'd cut out were too appealing to waste, so I found ways to use those as well. They were delicate little shapes, and I soldered them onto silver backgrounds to create cufflinks and other pieces. These swallow jewellery pieces became a much-loved part of my range for years before I eventually retired them.

I'd thought about returning to swallows several times since then, but the designs never quite made it into a finished collection. For the anniversary range, I decided it was finally time.

This time I started with the bird itself rather than its silhouette cut out of a silver panel. I wanted something a bit closer to those traditional swallow pendants I remembered from childhood, but with a character of its own. I added delicate cut-out details to the wings and tail to give the silver birds a sense of lightness, movement and flight.

I'm particularly happy with how those details worked out. The new swallows are more intricate than my earlier designs, but still have that instantly recognisable shape I've loved since childhood. I've also paired one of the pendants with pale blue aquamarine beads, a little nod to the blue swallow necklace I never had.

Familiar Shapes, New Combinations: Butterflies and Leaves

Some ideas have appeared in my jewellery again and again over the years, often in quite different forms. I've revisted a few of these and created new interpretation for the 30th Anniversary Range.

Butterflies are one example. Over many years I've made a wide array of butterfly-inspired jewellery featuring etched patterns, simple silhouettes and intricate cut-out shapes, including a butterfly wing pendant that has remained in my range for many years but which is on its way to retirement.

For the anniversary collection, I've returned to butterflies with a new monarch butterfly design. Rather than revisiting one particular piece of jewellery, I've drawn on my longstanding fascination with the structure and patterns of butterfly wings to create something new.

It's another interpretation of a motif that never seems to lose its appeal for me.

I've also revisited some familiar botanical designs, particularly the combination of leaf patterns and teardrop shapes.

In earlier ranges, I made etched silver leaf pendants with green coloured silk necklaces and also a much-loved pair of silver teardrop earrings with 24ct gilding applied to the surface. Both designs eventually disappeared from my collection, but elements of each have found their way into the new range.

The new leaf teardrop pieces bring together several familiar elements: a leaf pattern I've used before, now cut out rather than etched, and the teardrop shape that has appeared in numerous designs over the years.

I've also returned to using 24ct gold gilding, applied to silver using keum-boo - an ancient Korean technique I learned from a fellow student which bonds real gold foil to a silver surface. And I've incorporated green peridot gemstones as a nod to an earlier version of the leaf necklace, which was suspended from green silk thread. See all of the Leaves Teardrop Jewellery Designs as well as the examples below.

In these instances, rather than reproducing one particular piece, I've combined several ideas I've enjoyed working with over the years.

Looking Back, Making Something New

Creating this anniversary range has been a great opportunity to revisit some old favourites, including designs I hadn't thought about for years. It's reminded me how much my approach to jewellery making has changed, but also how many of the things that fascinated me when I started are still just as interesting today.

Perhaps that's what I still like most about creating jewellery: there's always another idea to explore, another problem to solve, or something familiar to look at in a different way.

I hope you'll enjoy exploring our new 30th Anniversary Jewellery Range and discovering some of the stories behind the pieces.

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