An Old Book, a Continuing Question

A 1932 publication on silversmith John Coney, a distant relative through my Poore family line, has arrived in my studio. It offers a way to look more closely at his work and consider it alongside my own.

I am re-reading John Dewey’s Art as Experience, thinking about the relationship between art and lived experience. Alongside it, Colin Renfrew’s Figuring It Out brings me back to the idea that what we make, in turn, makes us. Together, these readings have me wondering how making shapes our lives. And what it means to consider that question across generations, from Coney’s work to my own at the bench.

Coney / Continuance is a working title for this exploration. As a woman metalsmith and jeweler working today, I am interested in how Coney’s formal language might enter into dialogue with my own, across different times, circumstances, and experiences of making. What that might look like remains an open question.