When I was a child I found an egg-shaped stone on a pebble beach. I gave it to my Nan who had asked me to bring her the smoothest stone I could find. I'm not sure she had ever heard of a worry stone, but I know she found it soothing to move a stone over the tips of her fingers and hold its gentle, heavy weight in the palm of her hand. When she moved into care, I found the egg-shaped stone in her jewellery box. It was still the same stone I'd found on that pebble beach, but it felt different. Like it had absorbed some of my Nan's softness. Now, the stone had passed to me; it was my turn to keep it. When the day came to say goodbye to Nan, I was across the sea in Ireland, and when I'd said everything I could over a video call, I found her stone amongst all my others and whispered to her through it.  “It’s okay Nan”, I said. “You can let go now”. And within the hour, she had done just that.

Like stone, wax is a great carrier of communication. I make jewellery using the age-old technique of lost wax casting. This means modelling and carving a wax model, making a mould — after which the wax model is discarded (lost) — and then producing a cast from that mould. Archaeological records suggest that this method was first used at some point in the fourth millennium BC. Considering the technology available to jewellers today (CAD and 3D printing), the lost wax method is a pretty primitive one, but it's stood the test of time because it's so versatile and extremely accurate.

The core of my inspiration resides in the past. The impressions left by the hands of people who lived long long ago, and the stone surfaces that so stubbornly hold on to them. 

When I look at megalithic art, a conversation spanning millennia takes place in silence. Because whilst we may never have a concrete explanation for them, we know these ancient symbols as forms of communication. When we see them, there's an awakening, a remembering going on deep down in the subconscious. A memory passed on in stone. By referencing these symbols and images in my designs, I hope I am in some way helping to preserve them in our collective consciousness, until, perhaps, we have remembered their true significance. 

Strangely sponge-like, these stones have absorbed and kept their secrets for so long. In my practise, I use stones to shape my wax models; they share their surface with me. It feels like capturing a little bit of place, a little bit of past. Choosing a stone means contemplating its texture. Where did I find it? Why did I like it and keep it? But deeper questions arise. How long have these stones been here, and what have they seen? Who else has held them? What oceans have they sat at the bottom of? Which mountains are they the tiny crumbs of?

There is an immediacy to making something with your hands that pushes and pulls against the slow tempo of learning that craft demands. Working with wax feels like an immersive, almost ritualistic process. Like our megalithic ancestors, I make my impressions by slowly scraping away material and digging into the surface to create an intaglio effect. 

Wax has a set of rules to master. It is a material that changes state and seems to sit between worlds.  It's fast and receptive to intuition, easily woken by the subtle warmth of one's breath, and at the same time slow, delicate, and requiring patience. It absorbs heat, and I never create work with it if I'm in a bad mood, because I suspect it absorbs that too. It encapsulates what it means to preserve a single moment in time. 

I made a pair of wedding rings not long ago, and when I asked the couple if they had a special stone I could incorporate into my wax model, they shyly handed over a heart-shaped rock, recalling the time they found it. Their faces softened as they spoke, their minds far away on a salt-streaked shore. As my friend told me the stone’s story, he rubbed its surface gently, without thinking, as if by imbuing it with his hands’ heat he could release the memory. 

I was reminded of my dear Nan, her hands, and then of the engraved spirals I had traced with my finger at Loughcrew. I thought about the messages (both visible and invisible) we embed in the stones we hold and keep, and how we still instinctively communicate through them.