Autumn Leaves Cuff - Changing Hues

Materials: Anodised Aluminium
Dimensions: 3cm wide

Painted and printed anodised aluminium cuff, forged.

Photo credit: SlickSilver Jewellery

Val Williams
SlickSilver Jewellery
Plymouth, UK

Val Williams grew up in the Midlands and attended a Rudolph Steiner school from the age of 3 until 17 and throughout those years she enjoyed every aspect of the highly creative atmosphere. Coming from a crafting family she continued to knit and sew whilst bringing up her family. After studying for three years with the Open University as part of her work in the health service Val decided to follow a path which would become all consuming. She decided to make jewellery.

Val trained at the Contemporary Jewellery Gallery under the tutelage of Victoria Sewart in basic metalsmithing prior to starting SlickSilver Jewellery. Her inspiration now comes from the textures and colours found in the world around her. Her silver work has an organic quality and incorporates found objects such as seaglass and often features her previous sewing skills.

Anodised aluminium has become a feature of SlickSilver Jewellery's collections and has allowed Val to fully explore her love of colour and design. The aluminium is hand painted using specialist inks, and/or printed both manually and digitally and then dyed using her own blends of aluminium dye. After sealing, she cuts it in varying ways to ensure that each piece of the small amount produced is unique and exciting. Shapes are deliberately kept simple to exploit the design which is never repeated once all the material is used. Her signature collection features deeply textured anodised aluminium with repeating hand pierced shapes with sterling silver elements and hand finished.

The resulting pieces of art jewellery are highly individual and collectable.


The exhibition explores metal works whose primary theme is color embraced as their primary visual focus, whether that be using colored materials, exploring creating colored surfaces, or encasing the object in color.

As the world's largest jewelry related internet site, Ganoksin strives to develop exhibitions showcasing work from around the world. This exhibition was open to all metalsmiths, professional and amateur, advanced and beginner.

In total 303 artists contributed 814 show pieces for the permanent online exhibition.

The exhibition was curated by Beth Wicker, President of the North Carolina Society of Goldsmiths in the United States, and Adjunct Instructor at Northeastern Technical College in South Carolina. Director of the exhibition is Hanuman Aspler, founder of The Ganoksin Project, the world's largest internet jewelry site.

Hue is one of the primary properties of color, it refers to the place the color occupies on the visual spectrum. Humans have used hues throughout time, to create cave paintings, to decorate themselves, their clothing and their housing.

Different hues have taken on different meanings throughout time. Gold traditionally has been a color of purity - the metal gold is relatively unchangeable, and the hue of gold has come to stand for gods and goddesses, for royalty, for durability and for purity. Red has often meant love, or passion. Hues often reflect the meaning of the seasons, with pastels referring to spring and the burst of new life after the pale hues of winter. Summer is reflected in vibrant, deep hues, followed by the browning of hues in the fall as plants go to seed and die, and the land turns fallow.

The worth of a hue has often been tied to what is necessary to make the pigment that creates the hue, and the expensive involved in the process. Often created from crushed stones that had to be mined and carried by caravan over thousands of miles, or from fermented roots of plants only grown in certain areas, or the carapaces of rare insects - the creation of hue in a way that could be used by man was an involved and generally expensive process.

In today's world metalsmiths have access to perhaps the widest range of materials and hues in the history of man - and in some of the most affordable ways ever.

This exhibition celebrates hue - color - as an integral, inherent element of the work. We talk of the "richness" of color, and examples of this abound here. One expects hues from the colors of gemstones used in metalsmithing, but we also have hues from some less expected places. Glass enamels are an ancient way of adding color, as are a variety of patinas. Today's artists also use synthetic man-made materials to add color in ways that didn't exist a century ago.

We invite you to enjoy this celebration of hue, and the ways hues and their use have changed over time.