Spinning Wool into Gold
Golden Wool spins wool shorn from my small flock of sheep with recycled gold from the Welsh hills at a minute level. A combination which enhances both materials properties as a result creating jewellery which is ecologically helpful, and unique.
. Over the 2 years during my MA I developed a unique technique hand spinning the gold into wool at a minute scale then weaving this into jewellery.
I use 1 fleece to make a collection of 20 pieces of jewellery, I hand clean and card the wool, using a percentage of lanolin from the wool to spin into the material to polish the gold.
Each strand of 0.3mm width has been engineered to mimic the complex structure of wool and the overlapping cuticles into the design of the threads I create. I formulated a specific carat and dimension of Welsh Gold that could be spun together with a specific tension to encapsulate the wool and lanolin.
The wool and gold are spun together at a specific tension to allow the gold to encapsulate the wool inside, which only works with this specifically engineered ratio of wool:lanolin:gold. As a result the threads hold themselves with the materials own tension creating a strong bond between the both.
See video below to watch how the Golden Wool is spun.
