20 Years in Business - How I Made the 'New Dawn' Suffragette Pendant

The original 'New Dawn' women's suffragette pendant was commissioned to accompany the 'New Dawn' light sculpture created by Mary Branson and installed in Westminster Hall in June 2016.

The pendant is going to be available at the Vote 100 exhibition in The Houses of Parliament shops and online from June 2018 with some new colourways.

This images shows my 'New Dawn' women's suffrage pendant displayed on the 'New Dawn' catalogue featuring glass disks made by Adam Aaronson Glass Studio made for Mary Branson's light sculpture. 

Technical drawings of the pendant design and placement of colours.

 Strips of polished aluminium in green, red and purple were dyed to make the disks for the pendants.

Drawings of scrolls and scrolls being resist printed onto the aluminium.

The imagery used to create the disks comes from the end of the scrolls that the Parliamentary Acts are written on. I went back to the original scrolls and drew them so I could make prints of them for the jewellery collection.

Each pendant had four different colours to represent the varied colours of the suffrage movement. Purple, green and white for the WSPU and golden yellow of the WFL and red of the NUWSS. See my blog about women's suffrage banners.

Cutting silver disks for pendant wire stoppers.

Aluminium disks some with tube rivets

 Each disk was cut out then riveted together with silver tube rivets then silver wire that had a tiny silverdisk soldered onto the end was threaded through the holes and a loop made at the end to secure them. Silver chains were then attached to finish off the pendants.

 Wire being inserted into disks with silver stopper on the side of the red disk.

The finished pendants were packaged in Houses of Parliament boxes.

See the collection at the Vote 100 exhibition at Westminster Hall at The Houses of Parliament from June 2018 and at Cartwright Hall museum and Art Gallery in West Yorkshire from April until September 2018.

 #Vote100 #Votesforwomen #Womenssuffrage #UKParliament #Jewellery