What Colour is Metal? confronts us with a direct question: what do we understand of metal and its innate properties? In European culture the value of precious metal traditionally correlates with its fineness. While makers have long been experimental, innovating with patination and colour application, only since 2019 have changes in the Irish Hallmarking Act allowed the marking of mixed metals in Ireland. This has extended the creative possibilities for makers, allowing them to combine base and precious metals more freely. While this may be a divergence for European makers, in Japanese practice the combination of metals and the application of compounds to alter metal colour is a tradition spanning many centuries, as Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill explores in his text. In Ireland we have a long history of ambitious silversmithing and innovation in metal construction, from ancient torcs and brooches to ecclesiastical objects and chalices. Skilled work in precious metals continues, with Kilkenny as home to more fine jewellers per capita than anywhere else in Europe. Yet the processes of colouration of metals, while practised by a few to exceptional standards, is not
a wide phenomenon. This exhibition celebrates international best practice and simultaneously has the educational intention of sharing techniques, inspiring innovation and spurring on the next generation of experimental metalsmiths. Curators Sara Roberts and Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill: are both passionate advocates of innovative metal practice and craft education. They have committed years to the realisation of this project, which builds on Sara’s 1993 exhibition The Chemistry Set, produced by Crafts Council UK and The Southern Arts Touring Exhibition Service. Nearly thirty years later this exhibition takes a fresh look at colouration in metal as it stands in the 2020s, bringing together exceptional works by master metalsmiths from ten countries and three continents, to demonstrate the vitality, diversity and complexity of this discipline.
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