News
April 2025
GoFundMe - in support of Alan's final project
Full details and how to donate can be found HERE.
21 March 2025
Book progress
With so much gloomy news descending on us from all sides, I thought my friends on would like to be both cheered and up dated with a progress report on the book. As most of you know writing is a new venture for me but I have to say, I have found it a very enjoyable activity to do. I think I know enough by now to appreciate when any kind of work achieves that sense of flow that in fact does make time disappear. One’s thoughts and attention are elsewhere, and one becomes lost in the work. When that happens, the unconscious becomes involved and so the finished work is quite often something of a surprise. If you like: ‘did we do this on our own?’ and the answer comes back ‘well yes, it seems we did.’ In fact, might it be much better to say that ‘we did it together.’ All the various parts of our selves worked together to make a very beautiful job of Part One.
Part Two will be a challenge in that it is visually much more complex and shows work and materials I have not shown before. However, they all have a contribution to make and here is the opportunity to let them sing. I very much want to see how they all work together in ways I have not yet imagined, for every part of us has its own voice.
My favourite work of musical theatre is Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Sunday in the Park with George.’ Here is an illustration of how all the various parts of an artist work together to ‘give us more to see’ and open our eyes to the potential that exists in how we see if we only can look properly.
It is a remarkable story, that of George Seurat, an artist who never sold a painting, never made any money, and yet changed the world. All because he discovered that dots of coloured paint could be mixed together within the eye of the viewer and thus create much richer and more fascinating work with a huge range of applications in print and multimedia.
Sondheim placed the two versions of the big Choral piece ‘Sunday’ at the end of part 1 and part 2. We have seen how the artist observes the individual characters in his painting so they sing as they should both collectively and individually. The audience sees it first as an idea and then secondly as a finished complete piece where all the characters find their place in the Park - strolling on a Sunday - and only one person noticed the man who sat in the Park every Sunday and drew what he saw and so changed the world.
I feel it is a wonderful story, I hope you agree. For I believe if we look properly there is so much to see for, we don't have to all live in the gloom.
13 November 2024
A note from Alan
An appreciation:
To all those kind enough to support this highly individual approach to creativity.
This is my 921st project, and it has taken five years to put together. It has been a labour of love really, but that is what the creative process is all about. The single most important thing anyone can do, is to love their work, for it gives it life.
I never had any ambition to write a book, just as I never had any to be a jeweller, a hand engraver, or a worker in silver. I must have some sort of talent for it. Well, I can draw, and found I loved making inexplicable beautiful objects. It is usually a good idea to follow in one's life what it is one loves. If one is attentive, it is surprising what we attract.
So, here I am, writing a book about my work and the wider creative process, with the aim of adding my bit of experience to the already existing sum of human knowledge. I hope others may find it an enjoyable read and helpful in some way.
A mystical path found me, and I have followed it through all of life’s ups and downs. In the words of Stephen Sondheim, ‘I’m still here.’
In my book ‘In Search of the Blindingly Obvious,’ the Golden Thread brooch has a path of yellow diamonds threading through the grey ones. In some lights, it is clear, in others not. It is, however, always there.
I cannot explain how touched I am to have found such support from so many folk, in
the various communities of my life. Essentially, we have two journeys, one is individual, and the other is collective. These intertwine and support each other.
This crowdfunding initiative is not mine but that of my long-standing friend, Janice Hosegood. Clearly, she understands this and knows how to make things happen. This is a concept which helps everyone who participates. It is my first experience of it and, as I said, for me it is very moving to see how this interrelationship flowers. (See the Aleppo story, from my book.)
A surprisingly young Joni Mitchell wrote perhaps her greatest song ‘Both Sides Now.’ I recommend looking up the lyrics on YouTube. Sometimes I find there are others who put across how you feel better than you can yourself.
Much of what I have written I didn’t realise I knew, but in writing it down it builds understanding from something previously unknown. I think it is all any of us can do really.
15 October 2024
Fundraising update
Thank you so much for your generosity, your support and your kind messages, at the start of this fundraising journey.
This is an excerpt from the opening chapter of Alan’s book, ‘In Search of the Blindingly Obvious,’ which we'd love to share with you.
My aim in writing this book.
There are a number of ways in which this possible ‘Last Hurrah’ of a project can be seen, although I did not appreciate this when I started. In other words, I did not know where this book would end up, nor the journey it would take me on. Whoever reads it will get from it what they need and what resonates for them and this will, I hope, be many and varied. It will depend on what stage of life they are in, plus their hopes and aspirations. My project numbers run to 920 and this biggest project of all will increase the total by just one to 921. It will have taken five years to write and compile and its subject matter is largely worked from the previous 920.
Please share this appeal with your contacts and friends. Together, we will make this a reality for Alan.
October 2024
GoFundMe Appeal
My name is Janice Hosegood, and I'm fundraising to help Alan Craxford complete his final project. We've known each other for over thirty years, first through work and, in later years, we've become great friends.
With a career spanning over 50 years, Alan Craxford is an artist, jeweller, silversmith, engraver, and teacher, acknowledged for his precision and mastery of precious metals and gemstones. Alan’s artworks are highly prized and have been exhibited over his career with examples shown within the Victoria & Museum’s permanent collection.
In 2003, Alan was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. It is a devastating condition and although its effect on Alan was slight in the earlier years, its cruel progression now has a significant impact on his physical and mental well-being and his daily life.
It’s probably no surprise to learn that Alan’s years as an artist-maker are well behind him.
Over the past five years, Alan has been documenting his life’s journey, through stories of his inspirations, influences, and characters who he’s met along the way. This collection of stories, with hundreds of accompanying photographs, is perhaps his final grand project.
I would dearly love to see this amazing project realised, as the splendid book it deserves to be and, with your help, this will happen. We’ve received generous support from a publisher but still need to raise more funds to cover the editing, design, print, and administration costs associated with such a project.
Any contribution, whatever the size, will be truly appreciated by all of us who wish to see Alan’s book come to life, for everyone to enjoy.
Donations can be made here.
May 2019
Victoria & Albert Museum - Bollinger Jewellery Gallery
The recent acquisition of Pendant of the Hidden Worlds*
In 1984 I was invited to make a one man exhibition at the V&A Jewellery Gallery by the then curator Anna Summers Cox. She was interested in focussing on my work with hand engraved and anodised niobium. Although use of its cousin titanium in jewellery was well known, the colouring and use of niobium was and has remained unusual. From that event the museum purchased the peacock blue / green drop earrings**. These are beautifully illustrated in the latest book on the collection Jewels and Jewellery by the present curator Clare Phillips.
At the end of last year with the generosity of Mr & Mrs J Gestetner, the museum has acquired perhaps one of my best pieces Pendent of the Hidden Worlds. Being some 35 years apart, they don’t perhaps at first sight have much in common however there is a significant link between the two pieces, in that both are concerned with light and illusion.
The colour of the earrings is produced by light refraction: i.e. there is no actual colour present. What we see occurs because of a thin transparent film produced by passing an electric current through the piece in an anodic bath. Light passing through this film is refracted creating wonderful effects, rather like oil on water. Thus, the perceived colour is in fact an illusion like butterfly wing. There is no pigmented colour there, yet we see quite clearly the vivid peacock hues.
This recent pendant explores the capacity of silver to reflect light. Here two mirror polished surfaces one white and one gilded are placed opposite each other and reflect to infinity. Thus what we see is a reflection and so despite it’s being strikingly evident can only be seen when looked at from an angled view. As the wearer moves this hidden world is revealed or not with the wearer's movements. However it has no substance, yet it creates a hidden golden world. This world is merely a reflection made of light. Or is it? If the metal is unpolished this world would not be there – so how substantial is it? Indeed does it have any thickness at all?
If something is made with light is it there or not there? What happens at night? Thus what is reality and what is illusion?
I hope you will go along and enjoy the finest Jewellery Collection anywhere on Earth and my modest contribution to it.
* Hand engraved silver, part rhodium plated, part gilded.
** Hand engraved nobium, 18ct gold.