Sheffield College of Art

I have three of only four copies published of a magazine called Design in Sheffield edited by Brian Edwards and Chris Knapper with photographs by Ian Rodger.  It was a showcase for art and industrial design in the region during those heady days of the mid 1960s.  The cover of this one features Stuart Smith with his go-kart that had just won the 1964 Milan Triennale.  For reasons I can’t remember, as a child I spent a lot of time in Stuart’s studio on Ball Street near the old James Dixon works at Cornish place.  While he and my father Jack talked the job in hand I used to sit in the kart and fantasise.  What caught my eye in the magazine though was an article on Sheffield College of Art and a picture of an abstract silver pendant – I recognised it as a pattern my father used for beginners when he taught at the SCA.  Just snip off random shapes of silver or gilding metal, tap them flat, load half of the units with a with a generous pallion of solder on one side and half with solder on both sides, arrange any old how then with a gentle flame let them fuse together while at the same time scattering silver or gilding metal filings on some of the units.  Then saw-pierce around the edge and add previously melted beads.  Very good for beginners as if the student was struggling with blowlamp control it didn’t matter if they fried a piece – it just added to it.  Forty years after the mag was published a lady walked into my Devon shop 250 miles from Sheffield and said she’d been taught by Jack Spencer and was I his son?  She brought out this silver pendant and gave it to me, she was very ill and was de-cluttering her life. I prize it still.