all the 'm' words

Melissa Montague is a Metalsmith.

Oh my, that’s a whole lot of ‘m’’ words for a Friday morning.

I first came across her work when I was googling spoons. I love spoons. No idea why.

 Working with both precious and non-precious metals. Melissa creates collections of vessels and spoons using traditional silversmithing techniques such as hammer raising and forging. Her pieces are often finished with a blackened surface and rubbed away to highlight hammer marks. Some of the work has a more functional focus whereas others simply play with the idea of function. 

She also makes the most wonderful pieces of jewellery. Just look at these glorious brooches below.

I am interested in creating beautiful objects that work well; this very much applies to some of my larger work. But my smaller pieces are beginning to explore the meanings of function via ‘affordances’, a concept I discovered while studying. An affordance is a feature that allows you perform an action: so that a button is something you press, a handle is how you pull or pick up something, a knob will be turned, while a spout pours. We seem to be conditioned to recognise such functions, to know what to do when we encounter them. As a result, I am very taken with the idea of a false affordance, a feature that doesn't perform the action one expects. So much of daily life is spent doing things almost mindlessly, so I find it appealing to encourage the user to re-focus and connect with what is in front of them.

I’m absolutely loving these precious little copper and silver spoon earings which at £28 are a scoop.

Queen Marie

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