The Christmas market season is finally here! The Montreal School of Jewellery is proud to offer its graduates the opportunity to participate, for the first time, in the largest event bringing together the production of a wide range of artisans: the Salon des métiers d’art du Québec. From December 9th to 19th, you will have the chance to discover the jewellery of François Charest, Julie Williston and Marianne Richard, all three graduates of our school. Before finally being able to discover the fruit of their work in person, we offer you an immersion in the universe of each of them as well as a preview of the pieces they will be offering you.
François Charest
Precious stones are the basis and origin of his interest in jewellery. After a decade as a collector and lapidary, François decided to learn to work with precious metals to set stones.
He has always had a fascination for the garnet family, especially the green garnets, tsavorites and demantoids, which are the rarest and most sought after.
Through his collections, he seeks to create jewellery that is simple, delicate and light, but with a beautiful complexity of detail, volume and flexibility.
Julie Williston
Metals, gems and found objects allow Julie’s imagination to manifest itself. Using traditional jewellery and goldsmithing techniques, she creates wearable sculptures, assembles voluminous jewellery that bounces light and absorbs darkness. Her approach encourages a dialogue between the organic forms she gives to metals and the other materials she chooses. She favours raw stones, stones salvaged from old jewellery, and unusual objects: “For me, these objects are as precious as the finest stones in the world, I bequeath to them a precious history”.
Thanks to the metals, it is an opportunity for her to make precious objects that will have a longer life than her own. The notions of time, memory and identity characterise her work. She weaves links between nature and artifice by letting the materials she manipulates speak for themselves.
Through the lost wax technique, Julie has developed an aesthetic approach that allows the gems to integrate with the metals in an organic way, as if they had been fused since their birth. She therefore plays with my materials with ease: she distorts traditional notions of setting, explores notions of comfort/uncomfort, and allows chess to give way to innovation.
Marianne Richard
Marianne’s work draws on what she finds beautiful and poetic. Nature and folklore are aesthetics that appeal to her and have always followed her, through time and age. Guided by these worlds, she builds her ideas by working with metal and wax in a controlled improvisation.
By manipulating wax and fusion, her pieces take shape by following her gesture and its impact on the material. Her own control is thus counterbalanced by the intrinsic properties of the material she is working with, which responds in an equally controlled way to each of her interventions. The forms Marianne creates evoke nature and everything that is organic. Lost wax is one of the techniques she favours.
Crédits photos :
François Charest
Portrait – Anthony McLean
Jewellery – Courtesy of the artist
Marianne Richard
Portrait – Anthony McLean
Jewellery – Courtesy of the artist
Julie Williston
Portrait and jewellery – Courtesy of the artist
