Welcome to The Cuckoo’s Nest jewellery home page and I hope you have found a piece of jewellery you really like. All of the jewellery is designed and hand-made by me in our workshop in Oxfordshire. We named our gallery and workshop ‘The Cuckoo’s Nest’ partly because it is situated in Cuckoo’s Lane, but also because we thought the quirkiness and unconventiality of the cuckoo reflected our own quirkiness! The Cuckoo’s Nest ‘team’ consist of myself and my partner Graham Rice and our over-enthusiastic border collie dog Bryn (whose self-appointed role is mostly to ‘meet and greet’ our customers). Graham is an artist and a framer and I am an archaeologist and a silver-smith. Our aim is to produce beautiful and unusual artisan objects and artwork and we are always trying out new styles and techniques to tempt our customers.
Though making jewellery has become one of my passions over the last ten years, I am by training a professional archaeologist, and have worked on projects in Greece and the Shetlands and particularly in Oxfordshire where I am based. My job as a Finds Specialist means I analyse objects from the past in order to determine how they were made, what they were made of, and when and why they were made. I have a particular interest in jewellery and precious metal objects from the British Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods - which is where my initial interest in silver-smithing started. A few years ago I enrolled in an evening class on silver-smithing, so I could really understand the techniques behind the ancient objects I was studying. After one term I was hooked on jewellery designing and silver-smithing and I have been making jewellery ever since!
Some of my jewellery is inspired by objects from the past, but in the last few years I have been focusing on designs based on the creatures, trees, and plants from the landscape I live in. We are based on the edge of the Cotswolds and our workshop sits in a small wood near an ancient heath where wild orchids still flourish and foxes, hares, and owls can be seen. My designs of these graceful woodland creatures all aim to capture their fluidity and movement. I also love the simplicity and clean stylised lines of tribal and folk art, and this is also incorporated into my animal designs. Creatures of all sorts will always probably be the main inspiration for my jewellery, whether real or mythological!