About Marianne
​​ABOUT ME
At age six, I made and attempted to sell little sun-dried mud sculptures on the side of the road. This resulted in much enjoyable chat with passing adults, but resulted in no sales. At the time, I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong…
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After leaving school, my first full-time role was taking charge of the silver-plate section in a local high street jeweller. Oh, the candelsticks and the glamour! Fairly soon, I was promoted to the silver jewellery department (bliss), and then to the ultimate prize (apparently) of the gold jewellery department. Obviously, I was drawn like a magpie to these lovely shiny things, but was also secretly disappointed by them. Why did they cost a fortune and weigh as little as a feather? Why would anyone buy them?
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Next, I was employed by an antique jewellery shop in London where bling was king! Here, the holy grail of jewellery was the largest and brightest stones, with stand-out claw settings taking centre stage; the more stones, the better. Again, this did little for me, and I drifted away from the jewellery world about a year later.
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After a decade or two in administration and video and TV production, I discovered the wonderful world of the handmade at some excellent craft fairs in London. Suitably reinspired, I looked at craft courses and chose one in the ancient craft of bookbinding, just for fun. Four years later, I graduated with a first-class honours degree in Bookbinding and continued to bind books alongside my full-time job as an Event Manager, gaining commissions and winning prizes in national and international competitions for my gold-tooled bindings. Whilst this was joyful, I knew that it was not possible to scrape a living from design bindings alone (the full-time jobs were all in repair and restoration) and I unintentionally allowed my full-time job to consume me…
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Feeling the urgent need for a distraction, I took a jewellery-making class at the City Lit in London for fun. A week later, I was shocked when I quietly admitted to myself that I had found my deepest passion: the alchemy of metalwork, the wonderful tools, and the almost endless ways of making fascinating items from sheet, wire, and wax, and by so many different techniques, lifted the lid on my creative imagination. I left full-time work, set up a small local business to tide me over financially, and set about learning about jewellery making following a programme of self-directed learning in this new and fascinating craft.
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The Cholla Collection has taken four fascinating and, not to mention, exquisitely painful years to come into production, and I would happily tell you all about that journey when we meet at a craft fair! It has been a very challenging labour of love, but one that was worth fighting for; the little blonde six-year-old me is now, officially, very happy indeed.
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