Sally Ratcliffe

Biography

Sally studied Theatre Costume and design at Canterbury College of art in the early eighties. After working at the Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead for several years, a move to Sheffield opened up the chance to ‘play’ with her interest in jewellery. Inspired by her upbringing in North Wales and its surrounding countryside, she creates work in silver, often incorporating gold detail and semi-precious gemstones. In 2005 Sally was awarded a grant from the Arts Council to experiment and produce some larger pieces of work, resulting in several sculptures, ‘Cornfield’, ‘Seascape’ and ‘Woodland’ to name a few. After this experimental period, sally was inspired to produce several new ranges of jewellery which ‘sit’ perfectly alongside their namesake sculptures ! Sally now works from her workshop and shop in Tideswell, Derbyshire, producing all the jewellery and sculptural pictures herself and experimenting with new ideas.

The processes that Sally uses to make her jewellery are, ‘reticulation’, which involves heating the silver and quenching it in water repeatedly to bring the fine silver to the surface and as it cools it gives a lovely natural textured surface. After this finish is worked Sally will solder gemstone settings, wire and ball designs to the surface.