CAROL MATHER
Carol’s studio is small compared to others at the Yards, the size of a bedroom. She doesn’t need much space, her work is small work, she is a silversmith. She sits at a desk, lamps angled onto her hands, a leather pouch stretched from the desk to catch the silver filings. The tools carefully laid out are those for the tiny violence of small-scale metal working; files, hammers, vices, wire pullers.
She shares the studio three days a week with Grey, a terribly handsome Whippet. Her great love is animals. Tutors at college frowned on her for not making abstract work. When she left college, first she made jewellery boxes, highly decorated. But what people liked most were the animal-themed embellishments, so she stopped making the boxes, and started making just the animals. After animals, her main source of inspiration, is late Victorian Gothic. Highly decorated, elaborate, with a big dose of medieval.
The display cupboard on her wall boasts quite a bestiary. Each piece serves a purpose; a warthog pincushion, a bear with panniers for salt and pepper. Her most recent project is miniaturisation, using computer alchemy. Carol’s pieces, already small (the size of a plum), are scanned, 3D-printed in resin, casts made, and tiny replicas cast in silver.
All those fantastic collective nouns; a streak of tigers, a knot of toads, but what are the nouns for a mixture of different animals? There on her table
is a tumble of stags, rabbits and hounds. Gathered for a hunt, or a parade.
She works steadily on commissions. Making pendants and tiny statues of people’s loved animal companions. She shows me one in progress. A pendant of a one-eyed Jack Russell, perfectly capturing his up-turned snout, long body and short powerful legs. Such life she has wrought in such tiny form. Just as alive as the Whippet dozing behind us.
Quentin Newark
