Output details

Enclosure – Silverware vessel

This work was exhibited as part of a group show by members of Contemporary British Silversmiths in collaboration with the Finnish Silversmiths Association and students and staff at the Institute of Design, Lahti University of Applied Sciences. De Quin’s piece was one of 75 produced in response to the themed title ‘SIDE X SIDE : EDGE > EDGE’. The exhibition opened at Häme Castle, Hämeenlinna, Finland in August 2009 and was seen alongside pieces from the UK Silver Trust Collection. The exhibition toured to the Royal Cornwall Museum, UK in 2010.

In Enclosure, de Quin presents precious and non-precious metals side-by-side in a symbiotic relationship of interplay between colour and form, base and precious, interior and exterior space. Enclosure references architectural themes of interior and exterior within a domestic scale that questions the significance of the horizons of the dining table. A silver vessel represents a precious inner sanctum with an edge-to-edge detail viewed through an opening gap in an outer copper wall.

De Quin’s piece is one iteration of a sustained inquiry into the place of silverware within culture, inviting users to consider how space is inhabited as part of a cultural ‘habitus’. The research context includes reflection on the great cultural capital of precious metals, and a consideration of the range of meanings that are conveyed in materials. This extension of the research into silver led to further artworks such as Vase with Double-Walled Stand that further explore issues of object and subject, private and public, and edges of dialogical encounters that echo the social and formal processes embodied within making.

The piece was featured in a catalogue, ‘SIDE X SIDE - EDGE > EDGE’, published by Contemporary British Silversmiths (2009).