Punctured Brooch

This is my punctured brooch.

I made this brooch for a university project brief, throughout this brief I had to adhere to three requirements:

1. I had to make a brooch.

2. It had to have a stone setting.

3. It had to be made of silver (5cm x 5cm).

and this is what I made and how I made it.

Through out this project I had to choose from a list of 20 words, I chose the word puncture.

Following this I had to explore the word and what it could mean, I did this by creating collages and through drawings, I also explored this through testing materials such as copper and guilding metal and basically stabbing pieces of sharp metal tools through the materials to create the punctured look.

once I had found my desired 'punctured' look I had to choose a stone setting, I found that none of the traditional stone settings weren't exactly fitting the aesthetic of the brooch so I had to look into an alternative way to hold the stone, this is where I started with the idea of tension settings, I felt like this setting really fit the whole concept of the piece.

When I discovered how to properly set the stone I had to focus on the brooch back, although again I had to test traditional brooch backs but found that these didn't fit the idea of the word 'puncture' so again I focused on another alternative, so I came up with the idea to 'puncture' the metal so I used used another tension setting that makes the brooch back appear to be puncturing the metal.

For the finished product I decided to set the stone backwards to create the illusion of the stone 'puncturing' the metal.

This is the finished piece.