I made this Sagittarius Christening Spoon in 1961, when I was apprenticed to a silversmith in London, in the old studio of of George Melville Watts on Melbury Road. That was a great time, except that my teacher – who was a lovely Frenchman and very clever – didn’t know how to do repoussé work, so I had to teach myself, and this spoon was one of my efforts in learning how to chase. In fact I kept hold of this one because it’s really a bit thin – the chasing shows through on the back.
This is what I call ‘inhabited vine scrolls’ and I want to say that, because from my earliest childhood down in Dorset I used to wander round the hedgerows with my dad, and he used to teach me to peer up into the leaves and look for eggs and birds and mice and things in these places. So that started my love of bird watching, which is a lot to do with looking through trees and branches… and looking for shapes.
I then eventually landed up in Cambridge University reading archaeology, or ‘dark age’ art, and spent a great deal of time tracing difficult drawings of monsters and birds and bees and men through these inhabited vine scrolls, because this was a pattern that was very popular in the dark ages… in manuscripts, on gravestones, in leatherwork and all sorts of ways.
I fell in completely in love with the Book of Kells, and with Irish Art, and that spoon in fact is a kind of rendering of an Anglo Saxon pillar cross with an archer in an inhabited vine scroll: the original dates from about 750.
So I have really enjoyed a lot of time in my life peering through branches. It also happened in my grandfather’s house in wales where there was a baronial hall with oak panels going all round it, just at nose height for a child standing on a sofa. These panels were from a workshop in Cardiff, employed by my grandparents to ornate their hall in an oak carving, and so as a little girl i remember tracing with my finger the passage of the leaves and the passage of the branches, and so that created a life long love of hunting for animals in branches.
Alison as a craftswoman – It became a livelihood for only a very short time, because I met George Stricevic (Mil’s father) shortly after that, and having thought that I could take my silversmithing workshop anywhere, I found out that it was more tricky than that! It was a niche market, and I made christening spoons for friends, and friends of my student friends, so there were often wedding gifts…
I’m happy to report that even a couple have been stolen by thieves, so I take that as rather a compliment!
Alison
The Royal Collection 