Top: "Bittern" Bottom: "Human". Images supplied by Inform Contemporary Jewellery.When it comes to beautiful, interesting pieces of jewellery – especially anything sparkly – I’m the proverbial magpie.
If it glitters I’m there! So this new exhibition –
A Wild Woods Winter by Auckland-based jeweller, Jane Dodd, at Christchurch’s Inform Contemporary Jewellery - is a ‘Must Visit.’ I particularly like her bird-like forms with semi-precious stones suspended from their ‘beaks’ or ‘claws.’ Jane’s inspiration was the old Gothic form of candelabra called Leuchterweibchen – and if you can pronounce that you deserve a semi-precious stone. These carved sculptural figures (usually maidens or dragons) were attached to antlers and horns, studded with candles and suspended to light the grand halls of the old days. Jane has taken that idea and carved her own antler or horn shapes from fine wood or shell. Animal parts have been carved in wax, cast in gold or silver and attached to the antlers, sometimes with precious and semi-precious stones.
The whole effect is magical – ‘very folk-lore/fairy tale;’ Medieval almost. I love it.
I used to collect stamps as a kid. My grandfather was a passionate philatelist and every year every grandchild received First Day Covers. I wonder now what has become of my stamp collection. It’s possibly stored away in one of my cupboards with all my school books (and my father’s school books and my own children’s school books). (It’s safe to assume I am a hoarder). 
All this was brought to mind last week when I saw these terrific new brooches by Auckland-based jeweller, Pauline Bern, which are part of a collection (called Collect) that includes thirteen brooches made from old postage stamps that are now showing at inform contemporary jewellery in Christchurch. Last year Pauline undertook the job of clearing her childhood family home and in the process, she discovered a large carton containing used postage stamps that had been collected by her mother and grandmother over five decades. They meticulously soaked them in water overnight, slipped them off their envelope remnants, dried them on trays, sorted them, labelled them and counted them. Most were passed onto charities for fundraising but it was perhaps fortuitous for Pauline that this one carton remained.
“That is the serendipitous story behind Collect, thirteen brooches that include fragments from the native flora stamp series, stamps that have travelled some distance within New Zealand, some time in the 1960s, arriving at an address in either Howick or Devonport,” she says in her artist statement. Collect follows on from Pauline’s earlier exhibitions, Gather, Sort, Scatter 2007 and Glean, shown at Fingers, Auckland earlier this year. All conceptually address the idea of “reconsidering and reconfiguring materials that have a former usage and meaning and shifting them into the jewellery genre.” In their new life, they gather new stories as they go out into the world adorning their new owners and ‘meeting new friends.’ Pauline is a senior tutor at Unitec NZ in Auckland and this is her first exhibition at inform. All images have been supplied by inform contemporary jewellery. www.informjewellery.co.nz 
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