It Starts Here: Working with Precious Metals in-conversation with Georgie Orme-Brown

Fascinated by the transient traces that animal footprints leave in the earth, Georgie’s jewellery plays with patterns and tracks. Since her studies, she has been passionate about sustainability and environmental awareness, and in conversation with Stephanie Souroujon from the Goldsmiths’ Centre explains how she incorporates recycled and fairmined-eco precious metals into her practice.

Stephanie Souroujon: Tell us a little about your journey into jewellery making? 

Georgie Orme-Brown: I knew that I wanted to do something creative, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. So, I started by doing a Foundation in Art and Design. That was one year long, and I gradually specialised throughout. By the end I chose jewellery and once I chose it, I realised that it was the right thing for me. It encompassed all of my other creative interests. After that that I did a degree at Central St Martins in jewellery design. 

Stephanie Souroujon: When was the first time that you got to use Precious Metals? 

Georgie Orme-Brown: I did not use them during my degree - unsurprisingly! After I graduated, I was looking around for a job and I wanted to move back to Bath because I previously lived there. I was lucky enough to find a small jeweller who was looking for an apprentice and I was taken on by him for around two years. In that time, I gradually started to use Precious Metals.

There was quite a lot of your standard bench work, like repairs, and we focused mainly on hand making which was excellent. We made lots of wedding rings and other things, so it was a really good introduction. 

Stephanie Souroujon: You have a very distinctive style at the moment, how did you get to your style?  

Georgie Orme-Brown: It began while I was at university. We were lucky enough that in our final year, we could take the whole year to really develop our own style and find out what we were interested in. So, I was looking for a long time how I could represent my feelings of a journey and I landed on tracks as a metaphor for that. I spent some time looking at the patterns and how I could interpret and translate them into jewellery. 

I produced a final collection, but it was not so much fine jewellery. I made a lot of pieces in porcelain and fabrics which was really fun. When I returned to doing my own work a few years later, I really wanted to keep the same theme, although it evolved a bit into a wider concept about transient traces, and how these marks are so fleeting. It’s evolved into capturing these fleeting moments.

When I came back to my work, I realised that they needed to be more wearable and practical - my uni pieces were quite large. I scaled things down, adapted things, and started to make my own collections in silver and gold.

Stephanie Souroujon: What has been your biggest challenge of specifically working in Precious Metals? Can you remember? 

Georgie Orme-Brown: I think probably just deciding when is appropriate to use them and make your work out of them. When I did my first show, I decided to make a few pieces in gold. It is really good to have them for shows, to show stockists and customers, but it also represents quite an investment. You don’t necessarily need to do that immediately. You can definitely make your pieces in silver and gold plate them and then they are samples. You can make things to order from your samples, which I tend to do more now. 

Stephanie Souroujon: Sustainability plays a really big role in your work. How do you get into sustainability and what tips would you give someone who wants to go down that path? 

Georgie Orme-Brown: I graduated in 2011 which is a little while ago now. Although sustainability is very much at the forefront of our minds at the moment, back then it was only just starting to come into peoples’ consciousness. I think during my degree the whole concept of sustainability and thinking about where our diamonds and metals come from was only touched on briefly. But it was enough to spark my interest. I had a kind of bitter-sweet moment because I was so happy that I found what I wanted to do, I found my career and passion, then I realised that everything I was using to make jewellery is potentially harmful to the environment, harmful to communities which are really far away from me. So, it was bitter-sweet to realise that it wasn’t all great! 

I went on and wrote my dissertation on consumer awareness of these ethical issues in the jewellery market and it grew from there. After my apprenticeship in Bath, I was lucky enough to work at an ethical jeweller in London and I had a great time there finding out more about the ethical movement within the industry and how you would go about sourcing materials. 

Stephanie Souroujon: Give us those tips if you can.

Georgie Orme-Brown: Absolutely! I think that ethical materials can mean different things to different people. I think that it is important to recognise that no one material is perfect and different materials will give you different things – some may be more environmental, and some may have more social benefit. And you kind of need to choose your materials based on your own priorities and what you think your customer may want. 

The best options for me are recycled or fairmined-eco and I have most of my work cast. The casting house is Vipa and they have recycled metals as standard as well as Fairtrade and Fairmined metals. You can also now buy recycled metals in various forms from Cooksons. They have all kinds of products now – solder, wire and sheet and so on. Things like chain and findings are a little bit more difficult, but if you are a Fairmined licensee you can buy chain as part of a buying group with them, I believe Betts are also now making it available more widely from their website.

Stephanie Souroujon: Is it more expensive to source these materials? Do you think your customers pay for it? Does it give you that little competitive edge? 

Georgie Orme-Brown: Fairtrade and fairmined is a little bit more expensive because it has that premium attached to it, which means it can be produced in a responsible way and the people can be paid a fair wage.

I think that it is totally up to you how you deal with that price difference. Some jewellers just absorb it themselves, and account for it in their margins, so that they can offer any kind of gold at the same price. Some people will charge a premium. For me I think that I would charge the same. 

Stephanie Souroujon: What would you tell your younger self, just graduated from Central St Martins?

Georgie Orme-Brown: I knew when I graduated that I didn’t have the experience to start on my own yet, so that’s why I worked for other people first. For me that was the right decision. When it came to starting my business, I thought I was ready, but I wasn’t really ready! 

Think about how you want to work, what you want your life to look like and structure your work and business around that and be realistic. It might mean that it doesn’t look like you thought it would look, but it will help to make it your full-time job.

Stephanie Souroujon: You live in Bath and work by yourself. How do you maintain engaged with the rest of the industry? Do you have a local network or is London your basic network? 

Georgie Orme-Brown: As part of staying up to date with what is going on sustainability-wise in the industry, I keep in touch with a group called Fair Luxury who have been really instrumental in pushing sustainability and ethics forward in the industry. They run seminars really regularly and they are a great group to share information with and help you feel like you are part of a community.

Stephanie Souroujon: You also mentioned that you did the Getting Started course? Did you do it recently as a refresher? 

Georgie Orme-Brown: Yes, that was earlier this year in 2021, a couple of months ago. I was at a point where I felt like I needed to make a couple of tweaks in the way that I was doing things and I wanted to get that extra info and see if everything people were advising was aligning with my ideas. It gave me a bit of confidence and a bit of a push! 

Stephanie Souroujon: It’s always good to go back a bit to school. We touched a little bit on what you would tell your younger self. So basically, take your time is that what you would recommend. 

Georgie Orme-Brown: I probably take a bit too much time! Some other people are a bit faster and learn more on the job, whereas I want to get everything perfect first. So maybe somewhere in the middle. Take your time but don’t wait too long. 

Stephanie Souroujon: Any other tips that you would give students who are starting out and when looking to the sustainability side of things. 

Georgie Orme-Brown: If you are not sure where to start, I would suggest reaching out and asking someone because most jewellers who are interested in sustainability want other jewellers to do the same. They will be happy to give advice. 

Also, a great resource is a website ethicalmaking.org and is run by the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust and it has lots of useful information there on where to source materials. 

British designer and jeweller Georgie Orme-Brown began her formal creative education studying Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins in London. Prior to this she had embarked on a period of international exploration. Travelling across the Australian deserts was where she first encountered the beauty of animal tracks in sand. Later serving as the Artist in Residence at the Grand Canyon National Park in 2012 helped further her connection with tracks and traces. These experiences and consequential environmental awareness have continued to have a strong influence on her work and life.

Georgie then spent several years working in the jewellery industry at various fine jewellery houses across the south of England; at independent goldsmith Philip James in Bath, pioneering ethical jewellers Ingle & Rhode in London, and with Bristol luminary Diana Porter - accumulating and honing a wide range of design and goldsmithing skills, both modern and traditional. In 2019 she established her studio in Bath.