House of the Dragon World Premiere
This summer, I was approached to be involved in the World Premiere for the release of Series 3 of House of the Dragon, to provide a special gift for each of the guests as well as attending the after party as an Artist in Residence.
I was obviously thrilled to be asked, House of the Dragon is a blockbuster franchise for HBO, with multiple Emmy nominations and wins. It is the prequel series to Game of Thrones featuring an incredible cast including Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Steve Toussaint and Bethany Antonia.
The work I proposed would need to be well aligned with the themes of the show and curatorial direction of the event, but as Artist in Residence it was important that my own voice and message remained central to what I offered. The team were incredibly supportive of me throughout the whole process. I feel very grateful for their championing of my practice and I am excited to share a little more detail about the whole experience.
The concept:
I was to be staged at the after party in a dedicated Jewellery Room, among the transformed spaced of Old Sessions House with dining experiences, cocktail bars, pool room and dance floor created for the event. The curatorial theme was “The Cost of War”. Plans showed how this direction was considerately woven into every aspect of the immersive interior styling, food, drink and encounters for the guests. Elegant touches of flames, embers, smoke and ash pervaded every sensory experience.
The team reached out to me because they were exploring commissioning special chainmail gifts for their guests. They were seeking something fashion-forward, giving subtle nods to the series while matching the prestige and elevated HBO max brand. I immediately knew my Molten Collection of jewellery was perfectly suited to this brief. Not only is the process visibly linked to fire through their melted forms, but my answer to the question of the Cost of War could be both a message of physical and psychological impact told through this body of work. My Molten pieces are about recognizing damage, but also suggest towards the complexity of cultivating inner strength and resilience from these experiences.
When the chainmail is melted, the result is a tactile difference between the areas spared from the heat, which remain flexible and fabric-like, compared to those which quickly become uncontrollably fused together. This gives the visual appearance of damage, but what matters to me is the contrast in how these areas feel. Although the perfect pattern of chainmail is interrupted, the rigid molten structure which emerges from the flames has its own bonded kind of strength. This contradiction gives the piece an intentional ambiguity, because it is not always easy to recognize the effect of experiences within ourselves. Wearing one of these works is a way of embracing vulnerability which is part of recognising resilience.
The Process:
I was commissioned for 400 pieces, enough for every guest. I was delighted that the designs were met with great enthusiasm and an order comprising of brooches and earrings was quickly signed off by the team. However, with a tight deadline and my largest order to date secured, I had to hit the ground running. I quickly assembled a core team of young makers at varying stages of their early career. They handled jobs like spinning the wire coils, cutting the silver to size, closing links and together we constructed many, many squares of chainmail. I also hired the assistance of a couple of trained silversmiths who could help me through the mammoth task of soldering all the earring posts, leaving me to focus on the fiddliest job of soldering hundreds of sprung brooch pins.
Once every brooch and earring was made, then came the most daunting stage of melting them. In hindsight, it could have been less intimidating if I had been melting the pieces as I went along, because I felt quite nervous looking at the very large pile of perfect pieces that we had all worked so diligently on. I emptied the studio of my wonderful team because I felt I needed to be alone to face this task. Sacrificing all our hard work to the chances of the flames felt incredibly conflicting. The incredible change of pace it took to burn and alter them instantly and irreversibly, felt like it caused a kind of mental metaphorical whiplash.
In a matter of seconds the work first glows, then flashes and shrinks, merges and ruptures. Beautiful organic and unique melted patterns occur from each piece and I became strangely hooked on the thrill of damaging our work to see what emerged from the flames. Embracing this loss of time and effort is part of the practice which evokes me to personally experience the themes of resilience and vulnerability through the very making of it. It was an exhilarating exercise in acceptance.
The Event:
Being Artist In Residence meant providing an experience. The materials and process which went into the pieces would be demonstrated, and guests could learn more about the motivations and meaning behind the work directly from me.
When we arrived on the morning of the premiere, my assistant Cesca, my husband Andy and I set to work packaging each piece into the bespoke velvet pouches. All the while, Old Sessions House was being transformed. Quickly the walls surrounding us were draped with heavy fabric and the acoustics created an instant intimate atmosphere. I could feel the plans coming to life around me and the level of detail being observed and executed was superb.
My Molten Jewellery pieces displayed on bespoke commissioned surface by Bcreative bespoke
The room was divided in half by a high bar. Behind it, Cesca continued the work she had grown so accustomed to over the past month and demonstrated the incredible attention to detail that went into every piece. I stood at the bar where the pieces were laid out over three exquisitely carved wooden display surfaces that I had commissioned from my talented friend Brish for this occasion. Each of his pieces was like a minimalist charred landscape of perfect black, which set off the pieces beautifully.
I spoke to the guests and helped them to select a piece from the options of silver or oxidized-finish brooches and earrings. I also had two lovely hosts who helped to distribute the pieces when word got out about the jewellery room and we were suddenly full of cast members, executives and VIPs.
The pieces went down extremely well, with a few guests even adorning themselves with them straight away. I was blown away to receive so many positive comments over the course of one evening. After such an intense period of preparation to get there, it was incredible to see the work go to so many grateful guests and to celebrate this milestone in my practice over a Burnt Apricot Margarita or two.
