New design show in Cheltenham (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

New design show in Cheltenham

CHELTENHAM Art Gallery and Museum is currently showing work by locally based craftsman Helen Newman whose passionate desire to wear the fashionable large chain belts of the late 1960s started her on the successful path as a jewellery designer/maker.

She borrowed tools from her father and enjoyed the excitement of cutting sheet metal and carrying out something completely new.

The results led to an early collection described as 'body sculpture' and a show in a Mayfair Gallery in 1970 led to commissions from prestigious clients like Una Stubbs and coverage in Harpers and Queen and In Vogue - Men.

Helen grew up in artistic surroundings, her mother was a painter and her father, Adrian Digby, was an ethnologist at the British Museum.

As a small child she would accompany him to the museum and spend her time looking at the objects in the galleries, developing an eye for pattern, colour and form.

Later she studied at the Cambridge School of Art and Goldsmiths, London where she gained a national diploma in design.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s she ran a series of successful workshops and was quick to adapt her techniques to new ideas.

In the 1970s she designed gold and silver handmade chains, sometimes interspersed with semi-precious stones to suit the fashion for smaller, delicate pieces.

Exhibitions officer Sophoa Wilson said: "In this exhibition visitors can enjoy Helen's work from her earliest pieces to those she has made this year.

"And because she has never thrown anything away it is possible to show how she has designed and made a piece from its initial sketches, test template and final piece. Boxes of washers, nails and treasured finds from junk shops complete the exhibition."

The exhibition runs until January 14.