Hand Made Yorkshire Collective: Meet the Maker Monday - Introducing Steve Smith of Steve Smith Jewellery

At Hand Made Yorkshire, we want to introduced to you our artists, crafters and designer makers, their wonderful work and where you can find them.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Stephen Smith (That's his Sunday name by the way), designer and maker at Steve Smith Jewellery, based in Northallerton, North Yorkshire.Steve is also 1/4 of the founding members of Hand Made Yorkshire.
Here's what Steve had to tell me:

How long have you been a designer maker?

6 years making dichroic glass jewellery but was an abstract artist before that.

What do you do/make?

I design and make Kiln fired glass jewellery and include some silver smithing in some of my pieces.

How did you become a designer/maker?

For a long, long time, I painted abstract art for open exhibitions and before that did quite a few animal portraits.

When I went to art exhibitions the three-dimensional art always caught my eyes. It’s different shapes and form and watching the light change and bounce in different directions.

I think this is when it started.

I loved the idea of making glass jewellery but never could because of the cost of a kiln. Until I met my wonderful muse and partner, Sue. It was her who gave me the confidence to start designing and making and put the idea of asking for a kiln on freecycle to get me started. Within 48 hours I was fully kitted out with a kiln and all the tools to get started. Although, the very first time I plugged the 40 year old kiln into a very long extension cable and set it going outside in the garden, just in case it burst into flames.

I used that kiln for nearly 2 years before buying a more reliable one that didn’t have hot spots.