Dezeen School Shows: jewellery designed to keep messages hidden is included in Dezeen's latest school show by New Designers.

Also included is a breakfast tableware set made from terracotta and a metal sculpture informed by both brutalism and music.

New Designers

Institution: New Designers
Course: NS23
Tutor: Sally Bent

School statement:

"New Designers is the longest-running and leading graduate design showcase in the country.

"This year is the 38th anniversary and will bring together 200 flagship university design courses that will be showcasing 3,000 of the UK's top design graduates.

"New Designers connects future design stars with the industry for creative exchange and professional collaboration, featuring talks and workshops organised by leading brands and industry members. Discover the future of design at New Designers 2023.

"Below you can explore standout jewellery, ceramic and contemporary craft projects from graduates who will be exhibiting at this year's edition of New Designers."

Grids by Kirsten Marrs

"In developing my concept related to architecture, these three words have remained true: grid, stack and colour.

"Marrs' collection includes porcelain vessels and sculptures that explore grids as being related to the facade of buildings and 3D structural grids.

"They are hand-built using grid and modular forms with surface decoration that explores colour and line."

Student: Kirsten Marrs
Course: Morley College London, HND Ceramics

Breakfast Set by Lucy Physick

"Breakfast Set by Lucy Physick is hand-thrown in terracotta and stacked together to create one harmonious set with detailed ovals that enable highly functional tableware for the contemporary home."

Student: Lucy Physick
Course: Staffordshire University, BA (Hons) 3D Designer Maker
Email: lucyphys[at]yahoo.com

Untitled by Laura Cruikshank

"Laura Cruikshank's work is process-driven where the rhythms of making, observing, drawing and gathering overlap.

"This allows a continual progression and development of compositions that are playfully arranged and rearranged amongst an ever-growing library of abstracted forms, textures and the study of subtle movement.

"Each work is constructed with meticulous care and patience and embodies the time and enjoyment imbued by the making process.

"This collection aims to inspire a curiosity in others for the act of paying attention to the rich, tactile and ever-changing natural environment around us and to offer an engagement with composition through interaction with individual elements where a balance can be found that is personal to the individual."

Student: Laura Cruikshank
Course: DJCAD, University of Dundee, BA (Hons) Jewellery and Metal Design

At One With Nature by Aleksandra Koziolek

"The At One with Nature collection is inspired by nature with a focus on the relationship between the human body and botany.

"It tells a story of how the human body and nature physically and metaphorically reunite after the human body dies and decomposes, being reabsorbed by nature.

"Admiring various plants and their anatomy, Aleksandra Koziolek paid most of her attention to trees and their visual allusion to the human nervous system. Inspired by that connection, she continued her research by visiting botanic gardens and the Surgeons' Hall Museum to look for more themes and connections.

"The research and findings resolved in this jewellery collection consisting of three mini collections that include five rings, three brooch pins, two brooches and a neckpiece. As the theme of the work is growth, the rings and brooches are presented from the smallest to the largest piece.

"To get the full idea of what the work is about, the pieces must be presented on or with relation to the human body, giving the idea of them being inseparable, created to be worn and become part of the wearer."

Student: Aleksandra Koziolek
Course: Edinburgh College of Art, BA (Hons) Jewellery and Silversmithing
Email: alekskoziolek[at]gmail.com

Stories From a Herring Lass by Louisa Thomson

"Influenced by the exploration into Louisa Thomson's family history, the stories of the Herring Lasses from Scotland's coast captured her imagination and established itself as the main subject of her graduate collection, Stories From a Herring Lass.

"Thomson began with visual research exploring form, texture and pattern through papercraft and drawing. Made using precious metals, this body of narrative silversmithing and jewellery aims to express a sense of the lives lived by Scotland's Herring Lasses.

"During the herring seasons of the 19th and 20th centuries, women travelled from all over Scotland down the east coast of the UK to process herring. It was a gruelling job but allowed freedom and independence, resulting in a huge sense of female camaraderie and friendship.

"These collective memories combined with stories passed down by Thomson's own relatives and her natural lifelong pull to her native Scottish coast continue to be a profound inspiration for her work."

Student: Louisa Thomson
Course: Edinburgh College of Art, BA (Hons) Jewellery and Silversmithing
Email: lkt01[at]btinternet.com

Untitled by Agnieszka Kubica

"Agnieszka Kubica is a jewellery designer and maker using traditional techniques, especially saw piercing and enamelling.

"Her journey with jewellery started in the High School of Fine Arts in Katowice and has been continued in Gray's School of Art, where she had the opportunity to develop crafting and designing skills.

"She is fascinated by making meaningful, hand-made wearable objects that characterise her strong sense of aesthetics and composition. as well as attention to detail. An important factor is also bringing out the material's best quality.

"Her studio practice is focused on the topic of sentimentalism while discovering the power of the message incorporated in jewellery, whether symbolic or literal."

Student: Agnieszka Kubica
Course: Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, BA (Hons) Three Dimensional Design

Untitled by Euan Hunter

"As a ceramicist, Euan Hunter believes that beauty lies in the contrast between the organic forms of nature, with its rough and unpredictable textures that give life to every landscape.

"The way elements come together to create shapes, shadows and contrasting textures is an endless source of inspiration for him.

"He is fascinated by the way that nature can be both beautiful and harsh, soothing and jarring, subtle and bold – often at the same time.

"In his work, he seeks to capture the essence of these contrasts, illuminating the tension between smooth and rough, sharp and soft, light and shadow.

"By using clay as his medium, he aims to create both functional and sculptural pieces that blur the boundaries between art and everyday life, awakening a deeper connection to the natural world and its delicate balance between order and chaos."

Student: Euan Hunter
Course: Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, BA (Hons) Three Dimensional Design

Balance by Joe Shevelan

"Balance is a collection of hand-forged rocks. Some are jewellery designed to be worn, and at the end of the day, the wearer returns them to the stack along with the 'weight of the day'. Each group functions as objects of contemplation to enhance wellbeing.

"Over the past years, designer Joe Sheveland has tried to find a way of talking about mental health by exploring the relationship between making and wellbeing, and how the two belong hand in hand.

"Shevelan has made something that brings that idea together in a way that he believes can help other people as his craft grows, and he continues to work at the problems that affect all of us.

"It's the moment of interaction that he aims to capture with the hand-forged rocks and pieces of jewellery. When making art, sometimes it will fall apart and you have to stack it up again.

"Balancing the rocks, creating and recreating impermanent art reflects the process of both making art and of what it means to be human. We are never truly in control and nothing lasts forever."

Student: Joe Shevelan
Course: Hereford College of Arts, BA (Hons) Artist Blacksmithing
Email: joe[at]forgdathome.co.uk

Brutalist Sound by Rowan Lickerish

"Brutalist Sound is a series of abstract forged metal sculptures representing aspects of drum and bass. The works are informed by the history and aesthetic of brutalism and the processes involved in making the music.

"The seven works represent a musical octave and express mathematical and emotional interpretations of the music.

"The making of the sculptures mirrors the making of the music that inspires them. The steel is processed using plasma carving and forging.

"The resulting components are then composed into sculptures whose forms are derived from the mathematical structures of the music and from automatic drawing responses to certain tracks.

"Repetition and distortion of simple components create implied motion, with the viewer's movement through space as they investigate the works creating the frozen music's movement through time."

Student: Rowan Lickerish
Course: Hereford College of Arts, BA (Hons) Artist Blacksmithing
Email: rowanlickerish[at]gmail.com

Living Furniture by Caroline Bryan

"Inspired by natural landscape formations and the traditional Japanese woodburning technique Shou Sugi Ban, Caroline Bryan has created a collection of handcrafted furniture highlighting the material's stunning textures, unique forms and beautiful textures.

"Caroline's collections are unique statement pieces that sit between functional furniture and sculptural art."

Student: Caroline Bryan
Course: Staffordshire University, BA (Hons) 3D Designer Maker
Email: carolinebryandesigns[at]outlook.com

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and New Designers. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.