Emily Nixon’s work is intrinsically linked with the changing nature of the Cornish shore. The jeweller has become renowned for her pieces that echo the textures of the coastline where she lives and works.
Each morning, she rises at dawn to swim at Battery Rocks, the headland to the south of Penzance Harbour. When the tide is out, the shallow water reveals forests of kelp. “It’s like you’ve been transported to another place,” Emily says. “There are such vibrant greens, blues and the red of the seaweed. It’s beautiful and immersive.” Looking down into the water has a contemplative effect. “The breathing becomes like meditation. I swim very slowly. It feels like a sort of process.” Sometimes she looks up and realises she has been swimming for miles, watching the sun rise over the tidal island St Michael's Mount.
Recent travels drew Emily beyond Mount’s Bay to Tokyo, where she learnt the Mitsuro Hikime technique in a small atelier just outside the city. “It’s important to keep things fresh and new as a maker, to feed and nourish your inspiration,” she says. The atelier was ordered and quiet – often the only noise was slippered feet softly padding on the floor. “It was a really interesting time for me to take a step back from my normal practice and indulge my creativity and thinking in a different way,” says Emily. “A lot of the work I do has a sense of fluidity and spontaneity – I often refer to my creations as three-dimensional drawings,” she says. “I don’t draw on paper, I draw with materials.”
This approach naturally lends itself to the Mitsuro Hikime technique, which roughly translates to mitsu 蜜 (honey), ro 蝋 (wax), hiki 引き(drawing), me 目 (texture). The method involves mixing beeswax with pine resin, changing the malleability of the wax and giving the room a fragrant aroma. The wax and pine resin is melted to a precise temperature so it is neither too brittle nor too malleable. “It’s less forgiving than my usual technique of using pure beeswax,” Emily explains. “If the mixture is not the right temperature in the room, it won’t create the desired form.” The melted wax and pine resin is dried into blocks before being placed in a warm bath. Then, the mixture is kneaded and pulled into the desired shape, stretched and wrapped quickly before it turns brittle. “It’s unforgiving – you can’t go back in and use it again,” Emily says. “I was interested in how that is a bit like drawing and mark making. You have to have confidence in how you’ll twist and shape it before you make the movement.”
Wax casting has been a tradition in both Japan and the rest of the world for thousands of years, but it was only in the last century that Mitsuro Hikime really began to be used in jewellery-making, and even today it is not used widely. The mixing of wax and pine resin was more frequently used in sculpture. It was Japanese sculptor Kohei Miyata, born in 1926 in Sawane on Sado Island, who is credited with pioneering the technique and applying it to experimental jewellery-making. Some of his work is held in the The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. The technique is not known by many – the atelier’s aim is to pass on the craft.
Approaching the method informally rather than creating precise forms, Emily wraps, folds and pulls the wax mixture to create irregular ridges and lines in the surface. “I want to be a bit disruptive in the way that I use my materials,” says Emily. “I felt very drawn to the technique and to distorting the parallel lines it creates. I immediately started stretching and twisting it, which isn’t the way they had been using it in the atelier. It was interesting to look at it in a different way.”
Emily turns over a wax mould in her hands, created using the technique, which will go on to be cast in silver. The ridges and form are as unique as the movement of water. The wax has been moulded by considered movements, but shaped by chance. She runs her fingers over the raw, undulating edge of a piece of seaweed gathered from the beach, the inspiration for the piece. The irregular edges almost remind her of the movement of a piece of fabric.
Emily’s training was in textiles, not jewellery, and she feels a sense of freedom by not having gone to jewellery school. “I’m not tied down by the rules and things I would have learned. I can just create like an artist, and things come from the source of the idea, rather than pursuing the perfection of a technique,” she says. “It’s important that I’m using a process as a tool to create my work, rather than a piece being dictated by it.” That said, the Mitsuro Hikime process makes Emily slow down. “It’s like you are holding your breath when you pull the wax. It feels like being in the water, swimming.”
Discover our collection of Emily Nixon jewellery.
Emily wears the TOAST Baya Indigo Cotton Twill Shirt and Indigo Cotton Twill Wide Leg Trousers.
Words by Alice Simkins Vyce.
Photography by Valentina Concordia.
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