Silvervescence Designer Jewellery

Aurora Lombardo is a Cambridgeshire based designer and maker with a passion for jewellery. Largely self-taught, Aurora took up jewellery-making and glass fusing as a hobby in 2002 after giving up her research work in biology to dedicate more time to her two young children, she was hooked straight away.

Aurora set up Silvervescence Designer Jewellery in September 2003 and since then, her small part-time business has been growing with a rate of lightening. Her latest achievements include being awarded a Licentiate Membership to the Society of Designer Craftsmen in 2005 and having one of her silver and dichroic glass pieces, the “Trinacria” bangle, selected for display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London as part of their “Inspired by...” 2006 event. Last year she was also selected to exhibit in the Newcomers Gallery at the British Craft Trade Fair in Harrogate. She was greatly encouraged by the response to her work, which has led to an increase in the number of galleries stocking her jewellery.

Working mainly with silver and glass Aurora has developed her range of designs to encompass tastes from the classical through to the contemporary. “Most my work is individually designed and one off”. She explains, “I find inspiration in just about everything around me: from a landscape, an architectural feature or from a natural object. I delight in finding new ways of translating these ideas into new pieces”. In her work Aurora makes wide use of contrasting textures and decorative details with dichroic glass being used as a medium to add colour and bring contrast to the rich metal qualities of the silver.

“Perhaps because of my lack of formal training, or maybe because of my scientific background,” Aurora says, “I find myself spending countless hours at the bench playing around with glass and silver, experimenting with new materials, techniques, pushing them to the limit to see whether something new can be achieved.” As a result, most of her creations stem from workshop experimentation rather than from detailed planned drawings, keeping her jewellery in constant evolution. Examples of this are seen in two ranges that Aurora is launching this year, the “Fiorato” and “Duo” in which she unconventionally applies paper-quilling techniques to silver. Aurora is planning to attend a number of craft fairs later this year, including the Wrest Park Craft & Design Festival on August Bank Holiday. Some ranges of her jewellery are also available to purchase directly from her newly redesigned online shop and through select art galleries.