Auckland-based contemporary jeweller Laura Jer graduated from Unitec Institute of Technology in 2013 with a Bachelor of Design and Visual Arts, majoring in Contemporary Jewellery. She now creates jewellery from her bench at Whau Studios, a jewellery collective and shared studio space in Pt Chevalier.
 

Laura’s creative practice revolves around process and hands-on making. She starts out not knowing what she will make or how she will make it, but the forms develop through play. Her designs are never sketched out but instead realised through an intuitive experimental process, where she moves the metal as she feels at the time. It is solely through playing with thin metal sheets that she discovers the possibilities for forms and shapes that can be created.

 

Laura’s work is largely inspired by the softness and tactile appeal of fabric, ribbon and other textiles. By folding, creasing, bending, twisting, pushing and pulling thin silver sheet, she manipulates metal to create an appearance of softness and lightness, while in fact creating wearable objects that have great strength and rigidity. Laura enjoys the challenge of conjuring depth and three-dimensionality from flat material.