Goldsmith Jacqueline Mina awarded an OBE

04 January 2012

Jacqueline Mina who has long enjoyed a reputation for her technical brilliance and unorthodox approach to traditional goldsmithing techniques, resulting in sensuous and understated jewellery, has been awarded an OBE in recognition of her services to art.

Amanda Game, a Freelance Curator and Contemporary Jewellery expert, said:  “Jacqueline has an authoritative use of traditional goldsmithing techniques allied to a strong artistic curiosity which result in works which have a rare aesthetic presence in the field of contemporary gold jewellery.”

Form and texture are the two main preoccupations of Jacqueline’s art, and her jewels are visually exciting not just for their shapes but for the rich variety of their surface textures.  Throughout her career Jacqueline has constantly experimented with metals, and continues to do so, technically challenging them to new potentials.  Rising to and over-coming challenges has always been an important part of her work, and she maintains that to be truly creative an open and investigative mind is vital.

Her jewellery is the unique result of a dialogue between the metal and her own creative soul –she rarely sketches an idea in advance and works directly with the metal before creating the final design.

Over the past 30 years Jacqueline has remained true to her self and her art.  She has never produced jewellery commercially, and each piece and every component of a jewel she makes herself – she even sets each stone – and the back of a piece and the fitments are as important as the front.  Jacqueline’s is a low-tech workshop.  The only concessions to technology are a wire drawing machine and a pendant drill – everything else is made by hand using traditional goldsmithing techniques.

Throughout her career, Jacqueline has always taught as well as producing her own body of work.  Until 1994 she was a lecturer at the Royal College, in addition to teaching at colleges around the country (she herself graduated from the RCA in 1965).  Some of her past students have become distinguished jewellers in their own right, notably the Italian jeweller Giovanni Corvaja and British jewellers Jane Adam and Catherine Martin, all of whom openly express their gratitude for her guidance and tutelage early in their careers.

Awards and accolades have been prolific over the past 30 years and a past highlight of such a remarkable career was undoubtedly being chosen as winner of the 2000 Jerwood Prize for Applied Arts – Jewellery.   Jacqueline’s jewellery can be found in private collections worldwide, as well as the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection and in major museums ranging from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to the Museum of Art and Design in New York.

Jacqueline’s highly original fused and textured jewellery was the subject of a fascinating exhibition at Goldsmiths’ Hall in Spring 2011, she is also a Liveryman of the Goldsmiths’ Company.

Freeman Annoushka Ducas has have also been singled out for recognition, along with her husband John Ayton. Both been awarded MBEs in the recent 2012 Queen's Honours List for their servives to the British Jewellery industry.  The dynamic husband and wife duo, who founded and subsequently sold Links of London, have since embarked on exciting new jewellery initiatives, including "Annoushka".  Both are enthusiastic and dynamic supporters of up-coming jewellery talent.