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Sarah Drew
Sarah has been busy collecting beach-plastic, driftwood, ghost-net and sea-glass from her local beaches in Cornwall, ready to take back to her sea-view studio in St Austell to transform into statement collage necklaces, big massive earrings and riveted rings to launch at Top Drawer in January 2019. She combines these with handmade, hammered eco-silver or brass chains, sustainable semi-precious stones, recycled Fair-trade bottle beads from Ghana and hand-cut, textured eco-silver and brass components, often pebble shaped. Sarah has been making found jewellery ever since her move from York to Cornwall 15 years ago, but since awareness has grown of the crisis of plastic clogging up our oceans, brought to light brilliantly by David Attenborough in Blue Planet last year and tirelessly by Surfers Against Sewage (www.sas.org.uk) her recycled beach-finds jewellery has become really popular.
“People really get it now” says Sarah “They’re clued up about the problems of over-consumption, throw-away culture and reckless use of single-use plastics. I go to the beach most days and can’t help but pick up the plastic I see. If I can use it to create something people want to wear and keep then it’s taking some more plastic out of the sea, out of the way of marine animals consuming it and out of landfill. As well as raising awareness of the problem and encouraging people to talk about it. I have long conversations at shows” she grins.
In September this year Sarah teamed up with Nomads, (www.nomadsclothing.com) a well-established eco fashion label also based in Cornwall for a shoot with Alice Cooke (www.alicecooke.net) on the abandoned clay pit near her home, where she walks her dog and also finds post-industrial materials such as rusty metal, to make into one-off pieces of textured jewellery. Combined with oxidised eco-silver and brass, boulder opals from Queensland and roughly enamelled silver to create a worn look, Sarah has created her dark, post-industrial collection which appreciates the industrial past of her part of Cornwall, as well as giving a nod to the mining links with Australia (a lot of Cornish miners emigrated there at the beginning of the last century) and how nature has so effectively grown over the scars left behind on the land. Have a look at the shoot photos here if you have a minute: https://photos.app.goo.gl/m6DDLeFE4pseJwXR8
After a really successful show at Top Drawer last year, Sarah stocks over 30 galleries and boutiques around the country from Orkney, Glasgow, Newcastle, Newtown, London, Deal, Devon and of course Cornwall: her stockists are here on her site: www.sarahdrew.com/stockists They can choose complete one-off statement pieces as well as handmade stock pieces of hammered eco-silver or brass earrings, bangles, chains and rings.
She also encourages customers to send her their own finds to be made into special pieces of jewellery with a known connection to the place where they were found it or who gave it to them: jewellery has always been meaningful and sentimental and it’s nice to have that physical reminder of a direct link to a place where a memory was made.
Background information:
Sarah has always been a bit of a collector: not of high value, status-ridden things that you have to be careful with. Just little, curious, quirky things that are everywhere in everybody's everyday life. She likes to pick them up, look at them and put them in her pocket. Then she likes to make them into jewellery later…
She makes contemporary, definitely eclectic jewellery from found objects combined with sustainable semi-precious stones linked together with chunky hammered eco-silver and brass chains, delicate crocheted fine silver and fused silver focal pieces. She loves living in St Austell, Cornwall where she can spend plenty of time outdoors in the fresh air on local beaches and in the woods with her kids and dog, collecting curious things…
Using recycled materials, remaking old broken jewellery or basically ‘rubbish’ in this way is a sustainable way of creating unique pieces that aren’t a strain on new resources and whose material components are traceable. She’s sourced traceable boulder opals from Australia which are then set in recycled gold and eco-silver for magically coloured statement rings and pendants; and she can collect amethysts, aquamarine and other crystals from local sites in Cornwall to make into claw-set rings and pendants.
She runs recycled jewellery workshops at her studio at St Austell College, lovely hotels such as Bedruthan and at West Dean College in Chichester.
She’s written 3 jewellery-making books:
• ‘Junk-box Jewellery’ ( which is published by A&C Black)
• ‘Wild Jewellery’ (Jacqui Small)
• ‘Hair Accessories’ (GMC)
There’s some more information about my books on my author page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sarah-Drew/e/B005J4VBHI/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Contact Information
Studio 371, St Austell College
Tregonissey Rd, St Austell
Cornwall PL254DJ
07951 960 647
Instagram: sarahdrewjewellery
Facebook: I love handmade things
Twitter: sparkledrew
sarah@sarahdrew.com
Please don’t hesitate to contact Sarah for any more information or higher res images: she’s happy to send samples for editorial too.