Rauni Higson is influenced by the wild landscape of Snowdonia, where she has her studio. She drew this rugged natural world using it not as a direct representation, but to capture its feeling, lines and forms.
‘Brushstroke; is a distillation of line, based on a three dimensional brushstroke, accentuating a shallow dish form. The design began with an observation that the hammered raised line on a copper experiment of a cup, was like a three-dimensional drawing of a brushstroke: narrow to wide and back to narrow, from light pressure to heavy and then back to light as it tails off. Higson then moved to free sketching, using charcoal, pencil and then brush ink pens to capture the feeling of the landscape. Before working in silver, she experimented in copper to refine the design in three dimensions to establish which hammers achieved the right curves.
Silver was more responsive to light than copper and Higson then altered the form accordingly. A ‘foot’, invisible from the top, is also formed by expression of the brushstroke, and balances and supports the dish from below. The dish is chased, hammer-formed, and caulked; the foot of the dish is soldered.
Rauni Higson ‘Brushstroke’, Dish. Hallmarked London, 2016 Britannia Silver
Website: www.raunihigson.co.uk
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