Second Piece Inspired by Tibet

First I considered making a pattern out of the petals of the lotus flower. I wanted to create the same feeling of the three-dimensional flower on a two-dimensional surface. I also liked the style of the pattern which I created as it had an organic feel.
I played with the idea of making the piece out of hollow construction to create the petal shapes as opposed to keeping the pattern in a two-dimensional form. One of the ideas I had was to have the shapes crossing in an organic fashion over the shoulder. This idea later influenced my final piece.

This thought lead to the idea of putting the pieces together to use the two-dimensional pattern with the three-dimensional form.

I also wanted to add colour to my piece as colour is very important to the symbolism of the lotus in Tibetan culture. This idea led to the use of enamel to create the patterns I was previously working with.

I found that the “plique-a-jour” style of enamelling suited the style I wanted to achieve and was also technically challenging. I decided to use “pilque-a-jour” enamel discs and to put them into different configurations so as to keep the piece aesthetically light.


This thought process resulting in me finding an aesthetically pleasing design using the techniques and ideas that I had previously decided upon as well as keeping the style of the piece in tune with my previous work.

I finally decided to have the separate enamel pieces overlapping each other so that the “plique-a-jour” enamelling was shown off to its best advantage. The over-the-shoulder idea was inspired during the design process and helps to show off the movement in the piece. This became the final design.