The Art Newspaper

A life in jewellery

The work of David Watkins and Wendy Ramshaw

By Judith Bumpus. Web only
Published online: 12 January 2010

The artist jewellers Wendy Ramshaw and David Watkins met at Reading University in 1961 when they “fell quickly and completely in love” and married the following year. In 2012 they will mark 50 years of what Graham Hughes celebrates as “togetherness”. For 35 years they shared a studio, he tells us in his book David Watkins Wendy Ramshaw: A Life’s Partnership. They collaborated on paper jewellery in the 1960s, exhibited together, travelled together and shared the same experiences. They raised a son and daughter together while pursuing independent careers, each winning wide acclaim, and thrilling international admirers with their surprising and inventively daring design. Their ingenuity as intimate adorners of the body takes on another dimension in large-scale commissions for gates and other public designs. The technical and visual influences common to each, and the creative cross-overs, as well as their distinctive identities as designers—Watkins, austere and minimal, Ramshaw at home in elaborated assembly—are beautifully presented in this profusely illustrated book.

It is hard to know whether to categorise the book as biography or as an appreciation of the contribution Watkins and Ramshaw have made to the revival of jewellery design in the past half-century. Hughes claims it as the first account of “their life and work as a couple”. In support the artists have released informal family photos. At the same time, the dust jacket describes Hughes’s book as “a timely reminder” of these artists’ role “in shaping the practice and understanding of contemporary jewellery and metalwork in the UK and internationally”. These two intentions never fuse. In recognition of their equality, the book has two biographical beginnings, “David” and “Wendy”, laid out in parallel columns of text, one of which, in grey type, is particularly trying on the eyes. The experience is confusing and it is best to read each column as a chronologically separate if overlapping tale.

The author does not attempt to give these narratives a cultural or design historical context which would reflect the disputes of the late 1960s and 1970s between traditionalists and modernisers and the challenges Watkins and Ramshaw faced in making their way. He writes as a longstanding friend of 40 years, referring often to his own part in their success.

As readers will know, Hughes, now in his mid-80s, was himself an influential participant in the craft debate. When art director at Goldsmiths’ Hall and chairman of the Craft Centre of Great Britain, he not only promoted traditional design in gold and silver but actively encouraged the innovative use of alternative materials and expressive flights of the imagination. He laments the lack of recognition given to the crafts but barely at hints at disagreements in the design world occasioned by the way in which the Goldsmiths’ Company patronised expensively desirable pieces and the Crafts Council promoted radical, cutting edge, yet unwearable designs. When Hughes bought Ramshaw’s work for the Goldsmiths’ collection in 1970 he had already overcome some initial resistance from the traditionalist Company, and gave an important boost to her career. But in 1972, the idea that the Victoria and Albert Museum might acquire her pieces was rejected by its director John Pope-Hennessy, and only agreed under the directorship of Roy Strong. In 1975, when the Science Museum also acquired examples of Watkins’s work in acrylic and silver, the purchase of jewellery was unprecedented. The purpose was to demonstrate Watkins’s technological achievement in heat-forming, bonding and colouring a single object in the new material, acrylic.

Towards the end of the book the artists have added 31 pages of descriptive “Notes” to the plates. They contain much useful information omitted from the text and the brief picture captions. For the insights they offer into the artists’ thinking these notes may rank among the most fascinating and revealing sections of the book.

Graham Hughes, David Watkins Wendy Ramshaw: A Life’s Partnership (Starcity Ltd: available from CAA Contemporary Applied Arts, 2 Percy Street, London W1T 1DD), 178 pp, £30 (hb) ISBN 9780952665342