Monday, 10 April 2017

Melanie Tomlinson: Bird Brooch




Melanie Tomlinson takes inspiration for her brooch designs from Romanian folklore where butterflies and birds are a reoccurring theme.  Each individual piece has a connection to a piece of a song or story heard whilst she is in Roumania.  

Melanie has spent over 15 years working on how to print on to sheet tinned steel.  It is a painstaking process.  she starts by making original, colourful and highly intricate gouache paintings which serve as the base for the printing process. These are based on original illustrations. My bird is based on the Liberty Strawberry Fields illustration. The metal is then hand printed and coated before being cutfoldedcoaxedsmoothed and transformed into complex narrative sculptures, mysterious worlds in miniature, dioramas and tiny artefacts giving them jewel~like intensity of colour.  Quite often she combines the metal with other materials or objects she has found.

Crafted from printed tin, with her name embossed on the back, Melanie Tomlinson brooches are very life/animal like.  She makes moths, birds, fishes, butterflies, two and three layer brooches. The bird brooches can be found here



My brooch measures 83x46mm so it is certainly eye catching! It has a glint in its eye and certainly looks realistic.  I like using my brooch converter as it looks great as a pendant and hangs really well.




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