It was around three years ago that I travelled to London to meet Kevin Coates at his home, and I was instantly mesmerised by our conversation, which covered everything from life experience and development of ideas, to architecture, music, mathematics and myth.
It is undoubtedly his wide knowledge and deep thought that allow him to conceive such original ideas for jewels and centrepieces - with impeccable attention to detail and skill applied to their creation.
This does of course mean that it is a long and tiring process to create a full exhibition of objects (see below video for an insight), but I'm sure Kevin would agree that every hour is an hour well spent.
I visited the most recent exhibition, 'A Bestiary of Jewels', at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK, in March last year. Billed as a "poetic elaboration of the bizarre medieval encyclopaedias known as Bestiaries, which assemble lore and myth about animals", it was composed of twenty-one jewels pairing a series of creatures with a human counterpart, which Kevin himself chose based on mythical, allegorical, symbolic and historical associations. Each one was displayed in its own 'book-page' mount.
Among the pieces are A Hedgehog for Brahms, A Barbary Ape for Rose Macaulay, A Cat for Montaigne, A Salamander for Cellini, A Snake for Casati and A (second) Rabbit for Fibonacci. But of course I just had to select A Crow for Ted Hughes as the illustration for this blog post!
In this brooch, a mystical purple crow made from sulphided silver with labradorite beak wraps itself around a large diopside, with its piercing opal eye fixed on the viewer. It represents Ted Hughes, a renowned poet whom Kevin met some time before his death in 1998, and takes its inspiration specifically from Hughes's poem, Crow's Song of Himself.
When God hammered Crow
He made gold
When God roasted Crow in the sun
He made diamond
...
When God said: 'You win, Crow,'
He made the Redeemer.
Captivation at its most captivating.
With thanks to Kevin Coates and Nel Romano for permission to reproduce the image, for their friendship and for the inspiration they have given me.
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