We see ourselves as jewellers and object-makers with independent careers, but we also have a great deal in common. Sometimes our individual concerns overlap and provide opportunities to duet, to team-up or join forces: to engage in a pas de deux [French, dance for two].
We are interested in personal value, the kind of value that cannot be measured in a material or financial sense. Objects can acquire personal value because of what they represent, rather than through their material or aesthetic qualities. This kind of value can be completely singular: some things are important to one person alone, and their significance not appreciated by anyone else.
One of the reasons we find this fascinating is because it is a kind of value that we cannot easily programme into our work: we cannot make things that will automatically carry a personal significance for someone, unless we make it with them or specifically for them.
Another
way in which objects become more than just ‘stuff’, is through their
capacity to trigger specific memories. Personal possessions and
memories are inextricably linked, to the point that we might feel we
will lose certain memories if we don’t have a particular object to
trigger them.
This is one of the reasons we keep hold of things for so-called ‘sentimental reasons’. We are afraid that without material things to generate specific memories, we might lose these memories altogether.
We cannot manufacture sentimental value by ourselves, and this relationship between a maker and the eventual owner becomes another type of pas de deux.
Cheung & Potter 2010
