Faculty of Design

Material Art & Design

Melody Juthamongkol

Beaux Arts: Stay Merry

Collar Pins and a LinkA playful tale of two critters’ game amongst the fallen leaves. It is the maker’s hope that “Stay Merry”, as the title suggests, would spark a heartening delight, exuding warm comfort to the audience.

“Festoons, conventional arrangements of bounded floral, fruits, or foliage garlands hanging from two points, are one of the Classical decorative details carved into Beaux-Arts architecture. This work consists of two components: A pair of pins, depicting two cheeky squirrels, one peeking out of and another sliding into tree hollows. An autumn-leaves link that can be worn as a chain between the two pins or as a bracelet. When assembled, it takes on the structure of the festive arrangement. As festivities are synonymous with gatherings and the act of getting together, the accent jasper bead in the center of the autumn-leaves link represents unity. To express the subjects as closely to their natural forms as possible, the squirrel figurines are hand sculpted then cast through lost-wax casting, the tree barks and hollows are textured via jewellery techniques of engraving, fusing and reticulation, and over 70 individual silver granules and small leaves of different kinds are saw-pierced and compiled for the festoon.”