Naomi James

Naomi was born and educated in Sussex. She graduated in Jewellery at Middlesex Polytechnic and then worked as an assistant technician at the Royal College of Art.

After two years as a self employed jeweller working at Jess James, W1, she travelled in Thailand, Borneo, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, India and Nepal. Since then she has worked as a self employed jeweller, and was manager of the National Theatre Dazzle exhibition in 2001 and 2002.

Naomi has worked in a variety of materials since she started making jewellery at the age of 14. She has always designed as she works, allowing the making process to inspire the final design. Most of the pieces are made using simple hand tools and she enjoys the fact that a lot of her jewellery can still be made in this way.

She has frequently used embossing in her work. Earlier designs involved piercing patterns into stainless steel which was then rolled with silver. Recent work began with picking up feathers in the park with her young son - she found that despite their delicate appearance they could be transformed into a solid form by embossing into silver. She then experimented further with dried flowers, leaves and leaf skeletons and found that an amazing amount of detail was picked up on the silver, which she then complemented with touches of 18 carat gold. Some designs include coloured semi-precious stones.

Other elements of her work have evolved through experimentation with the textures that can be achieved with hammering metal. She uses a variety of hammers to create surfaces and marks that alter the way light is reflected. She likes the feeling that the metal appears to have been aged by beating it with a rusty hammer - like something that may have been dug up.