For about 27 years, John Z Robinson has quietly created his works of art tucked away in a small studio at the top of three steep flights of narrow wooden stairs.
With a wonderful view across the city and light streaming through the Central Dunedin room, Robinson has created his jewellery and signature colourful paintings.
But just as quietly, he has been mentoring the next generation of jewellers, opening his studio to students learning the craft for work experience and, in more recent times, inviting two to join him.
"I met John and he welcomed me in here. And it's me finding my creative self again, which has been very rewarding for me."
She graduated from the Dunedin School of Art with a bachelor of visual arts in jewellery and metalsmithing in 2014, received the prestigious Con Hutton Scholarship and was one of only a few New Zealand graduate artists to have had work selected for the Marzee Annual International Graduation exhibition. That took her overseas and she was contemplating further study in Europe when she found out she was pregnant.
"Then life changed for me, dramatically. It’s so nice to be coming back into making again. And moving forward with that as a career."
"It ended up kind of being my reason to stay in Dunedin because I thought it was an amazing opportunity to have."
Working part-time, Smyth takes any opportunity to come to the studio and work on her jewellery.
Robinson not only provided a welcoming space for the two younger jewellers but also mentorship.
"We learn a lot from John. Not only in his practice but also how he runs his business and we learn a lot of practical business skills for sole traders. And we certainly learn a lot of skills from him at the bench because it’s very technical," Leckie says.
"And we can run things by him. It’s very helpful having that mentor relationship with John."
But it is not a one-way street. Robinson also finds himself sometimes challenged by the different ideas they have.
"It’s not that we copy each other but you can’t help but ... be influenced by the people around you. They’ve got youthful energy."
Leckie says as there are so many different ways to do something, it is good to bounce ideas off each other.
"We kind of go about things in many ways perhaps, to get an outcome, and it kind of takes you on a different journey, a different creative journey. And we all benefit from that too because we’re all learning."
The trio decided it would be nice to show their work together and created "Round and Round and Round", an exhibition celebrating circular forms on the body through adornment.
"We all started unintentionally working with circles, so when we were talking about materials we thought ‘actually, we’re all doing circles’," Smyth says.
"I’ve done a lot of stuff with birds over the years, and so I’ve just made some round birds. But the main things are I’ve made these round brooches with enamel."
The circular inset of the brooches are a continuation of his painting practice, featuring colourful images.
"Those are the colours I feel comfortable with."
As the studio is quite tight, they do not have much modern equipment, instead using "saws and files", so Robinson creates his enamel pieces by heating it up — as it has been done for thousands of years — rather than the modern way in a kiln.
"There’s a lot of modern gear that you can buy, but we keep it fairly tight. So coming back to the enamels, I do them in the most simple way, which is heating the powdered glass on the silver from underneath."
It is not a predictable practice.
"Because it’s molten glass, it’s a molten medium, and so once it heats up, it can run in one or two unexpected ways, things like that, which is good. And so some of them don’t work out, and some of them do."
Robinson says looking at different materials rather than precious metals such as gold and silver is something jewellers should be doing as the cost of those materials is increasing.
So Leckie, looking at alternatives to those metals, has deviated from her past practice to try a new medium, wood, for this exhibition.
"So I’ve been exploring combining wood with silver and I guess that has its challenges too. The wood has become the links. So I feel like in these works, it can have that same purpose as the silver does."
She selected ash, as it is a very strong and durable wood that was once used for wagon wheels, and scorched the rounds to bring out the natural grain.
"I’ve cut it, into a link and it’s got this grain that goes across and you’d think it would be quite fragile. But the nature of the ash wood is very strong."
The process required her to solder it together without damaging the wood.
"When you’re working with silver, you can end up with like fire scale and putting it in the acid, which cleans off all the flux from the solder, that was a challenge because I couldn’t put the wood in there."
Another piece features a pure silver ring pendant surrounded by the ash.
"I’ve just had to be very careful. But again, the wood is actually really strong because I’ve had to push, it’s been forged with a hammer to go over the wood. So I think it’s passed the test."
She also hand-made cotton cord for her necklaces.
"So that’s another skill that I’m trying to learn moving forward."
Smyth, who last year created a series of glass droplet pieces for her final year show, was keen to learn more about metalsmithing.
"For me, this exhibition has been an amazing opportunity just to keep practising out of art school, and an excuse to push forward and keep going and obviously it’s an amazing opportunity having John and Millie around to bounce ideas off of and learn off of each other."
It is also the first time she has worked outside of a brief.
"So it’s been a great exploration of material and kind of the way that I want to go."
She is often influenced by stones in her work, so when she was given a stone, which had many different facets, it inspired her to make a pendant she could wear for her graduation
While she is still very interested in continuing to work with glass, she has decided to put that aside for now and see where her current path takes her.
"At the moment I’m just kind of learning forms and shapes and skills and seeing where my path takes me."
Robinson hopes both jewellers will be able to make a career out of creating jewellery in the future.
"So I’m hoping that these two will do well and will be here a lot more. So their part-time jobs can recede a little bit."
At Christmas time he took over a new studio space nearby to paint in.
"I enjoy making jewellery as much as I do painting. I’ve tried to step back a wee bit from doing jewellery."
To see:
"Round & Round & Round", John Z Robinson, Mildred Jewellery and @aurora.adorned, Tiny Gallery, Stuart St, Dunedin.
