Sorcha Carlin
Wignall Strachan
The Silversmithing and Jewellery graduates of 2025 present a dynamic and thoughtful collection of work that showcases a wide-ranging approach to the discipline. Each collection reflects an individual journey, with themes spanning personal narrative, environmental consciousness, cultural identity, and historical reference.
At The Glasgow School of Art, students are encouraged to develop their own creative voices through an emphasis on material exploration, technical skill, and critical inquiry. This freedom supports a rich diversity of outcomes, where tradition and innovation meet in meaningful and unexpected ways.
The work in this catalogue represents the culmination of dedicated research, experimentation, and making. It speaks to the rigour and imagination that defines the programme and highlights the future-facing perspective of a new generation of makers.
We invite you to explore this collection and discover the distinct voices and visions of the 2025 graduating cohort.
Anna Gordon Head of Department & Programme Leader
This series of pieces seeks to interpret some of the essentials of human development in vessel form. They are containers that can be taken with you as you navigate life and become a person.
As we grow up we need to be seen by others to know that we are real. We want to be heard so that we learn to trust our own voice. We yearn to be held - to have the comfort of an embraceto feel complete. It’s good to have an attachment to a particular place; to know where you’re from. We wish to be celebrated for who we are and to know we are thought about in our absence. In this way we can be content, bring joy to ourselves and others, and be resilient when faced with a challenge.
Metal is a material whose shape can be changed whilst maintaining its integrity and essence, just as a person’s character is moulded by their formative relationships. These vessels are made in silver to highlight the value of the nurturing acts they represent.
Flask
Sterling silver patinated, cork, acrylic cord
@tina_avery_silversmith
Through her Hands, Then Mine explores narrative jewellery as a vessel for memory, identity, and transformation. Rooted in historical forms and heirloom traditions, my practice reimagines these motifs through a contemporary lens, using materials that hold personal and emotional resonance.
This body of work traces the quiet imprints left by people, places, and rituals — from whispered exchanges with the tooth fairy to impulse kitchen-scissor haircuts and shared moments of getting ready. These intimate acts of care are reflected in tactile materials such as impressions of teeth, nail polish, real and synthetic hair, and false lashes.
Jewellery boxes, like memories, are self-portraits in fragments. A map of who we have been. Through Her Hands, Then Mine becomes my own: a collection of gestures, connections, and emotional landscapes. There is a quiet mourning in these pieces — a preservation of past selves and the transformations they mark.
Necklace
Silver, Irish Brass Twenty Pence, Freshwater Pearls
Pin
Silver, Resin, Hair inclusions, Lemon Quartz
Ring
Silver, Resin, Citrine, Gel Nail polish
@ _sorchacarlin
Growing up in Guangzhou—a historic crossroads of global trade and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)—I question how we might reimagine our bond with medicinal nature today. A “symptom” signals inner states; a “Co-Symptom” emerges when human and nature share a condition. Across history, we have oscillated between reverence and skepticism toward nature’s healing power. Today’s ecological awareness invites us beyond such binaries.
Through fieldwork in herbal markets, I studied two plants—Caulis Sargentodoxae (Hongteng) and Rhizoma Corydalis (Yikouzhong)— exploring their forms, properties, and links to practices like acupuncture and massage. Reinterpreted through jewellery and silverware using 3D printing, casting, enamel, electroplating, and herbal clay, these works invite sensory encounters.
Co-Symptoms invites viewers to witness, rather than consume, the evolving dialogue between body, nature, and time—reframing TCM not as myth or relic, but as a living, breathing narrative.
Brooch
Chinese medicine powder resin, enamel, sterling silver
@DENG.YOUJIA
An influence of pagan beliefs, traditions, and superstitions throughout my personal upbringing are directly reflected within this collection. The pieces focus on the contrast of traditional pagan influence — depictions of organic forms — and the approach of contemporary visuals present in a hypothetical anthropogenic environment.
My collection Apotropaia explores the importance of amulets and objects of protection within a spiritual belief context. Throughout the collection the implications of foraging, grafting, and nurturing — within the concept of pagan traditions — are visually achieved by use of cast ‘segments’ which are then bound and suspended to form cohesive pieces. The work utilises various materials; silver and bronze, taking on the qualities of strength and weight, with a softer contrast of branches, cloth, and threads.
The collection serves a wearable, functional, and sculptural experience, creating a narrative within the pieces as protective objects to be worn or displayed, the inclusion of ‘foraged’ objects that invites the wearer to physically interact with the work.
Selection of Brooches
Silver, bronze, steel, dyed thread, oak wood
@kwiat.raf
Duoduo Lin’s Echoed Emotions collection stems from her observation in life: the repetition of emotions. Her work explores how emotions reappear over time, often unannounced, yet deeply familiar. The collection consists of five groups of works— each rooted in a specific emotion.
Working primarily with silver and incorporating varied materials to represent each theme, Lin selects components that reflect specific mental and sensory conditions—reclaimed phone cameras (Tense), incense burners (Expectation), shredded failed paper (Disappointed), organic gourds (Reflective) and fingertouch-like acrylics (Touch myself) which is hinting at self-inquiry.
These conceptual choices are supported by technical processes including laser welding, diverse mounting approaches, and kinetic structures, allowing emotional states to take tactile and structural form with clarity and precision.
Lin’s objects are not endpoints but continuations—meant to be felt, traced, and revisited over time, echoing emotional returns that quietly resurface within the self. They encourage reflection, inviting viewers to engage physically and inwardly with their own shifting inner landscapes.
Brooch
Recycled iphone camera, oxidized sterling silver
@CLAIRE.LDD
This collection emerges from an ongoing dialogue with the city. As I study and work on the same streets I grew up on, I am aware of how memory settles into surfaces, how a feeling about a place can shift over time and how what’s gone still leaves a mark. This collection responds to those feelings, exploring containment and emergence. Motifs like fencing, scaffolding, and brickwork become visual symbols of boundary—sometimes oppressive, sometimes protective. They speak to a tension: the sense of being stuck, yet on the verge of breaking free.
The materials—silver, enamel, and glass—were chosen for their capacity to hold contrast and texture.
This is not about nostalgia. It’s about transformation.
It reflects a city, a self, and a practice in flux.
What remains is not ruin, but a trace: a vestige of what was, and a foundation for what comes next.
Set of 3 rings
Silver, Glass, Cold Enamel
@hollyy_macdonald
Mót og Mótun traces a journey through Iceland’s elemental terrain – a convergence of land, time, material and story. Meaning ‘impression and formation’, this collection unfolds a tangible sketchbook of gathered relics from a folkloric land in fluxigneous rock, volcanic sand and obsidian, mindfully abstracted to echo a sense of self in place and shifting internal topography.
My process is one of balance, where the unrefined, unpredictable qualities of nature meet with intentional craftsmanship. Methods that resist control, such as sand casting, become an act of observation and response, and the quiet strength found in yielding to uncertainty. Combining resin and found objects, the work speaks of erosion, concealment and renewal, uncovering what lies beneath.
What does it mean to wait? To witness? To adapt? Shaped by natural forces, with glacial patience, the wearer finds themselves slowly, elementally formed.
Collection of rings and brooches
Silver, volcanic rock, lichen moss, resin, dendritic agate
@_helenrussell
My collection, Regular Irregularity, explores the tension between imposed stereotypes and the personal journey of navigating, adapting, and reclaiming space within those constraints.
As an artist of Iranian heritage, I have often felt the impact of western medias portrayal of my culture, which can create a sense of alienation and hesitation in unfamiliar spaces. This experience informs my work, driving me to create pieces that invite curiosity and connection. I want my designs to captivate viewers, draw them in and encourage meaningful engagement.
My jewellery is deeply inspired by the cultural and symbolic role of the Persian carpet - a space for rest, nourishment, and storytelling. Through my work, I aim to translate this sense of communal gathering into tangible forms. I hope those who wear my pieces carry with them a quiet invitation for dialogue, however brief, sparking moments of connection.
Brooch Silver, gold plating, cotton and a steel pin
@YosefSMJewellery
My collection Rooted in Chaos represents the complexities of human interaction and the order and chaos of communication.
The communication between trees through their interaction with the mycorrhizal network and acknowledging that language is an essential part of organic and human development. This inspired my creative practice.
By using a mixture of traditional silversmithing techniques and developing new ideas by experimenting with traditional and non-traditional mediums and natural and synthetic materials, I experimented with hair and enamel. Although more commonly found in ceramics, Raku is an instant and intuitive process, both unique and innovative where no two designs are the same.
Once done the results are permanent. Juxtapose this with the importance of choosing pertinent language as words once spoken cannot be unspoken. Choice of words can leave an indelible effect both positive and negative.
Rooted in Chaos is representative of fragility of materials both organic and synthetic and the permanence of creative designs.
Brooches
Silver, Copper, Vitreous Enamel, Human Hair, PLA Filament, Steel @maryforestdesigns
Academic Staff
Anna Gordon
Michael Pell
Marianne Anderson
Andrew Lamb
Silvia Weidenbach
Helen McCormack
Technical Staff
Shona Guthrie
Maciej Sankowski
Caius Bearder
Artists in Residence
Alice Biolo
Tak Hei Tam
Imogen Hales
Misha McLean
Militsa Milenkova
Caitlin Murphy
Beth Sanderson
Thanks also to TSD Team
Lesley Black
Sean Black
Christopher Thompson Royds
Karen Westland
Alkesh Parmar
Stefanie Ying Lin Cheong
Edinburgh Assay Office
Studio photographs: Elaine Livingstone
Photography: Shannon Tofts
Catalogue design: Kim McNeil
