Pewter Live Competition Winners

The 5 Pewter Live 2013 Competition Winners from Bucks New University.
Pictured at Pewterers Hall in London

The Worshipful Company of Pewterers has been actively involved with the pewter trade for over six hundred years. Pewter Live showcases exciting and innovative work of both established and student designers.
The team of judges, chaired by Liveryman Sebastian Conran, will be looking for innovative design, craftsmanship and the ability to make their entries appeal to retailers with additional consideration for those who consider commercial viability.
  

Time Passes but Pewter is timeless. The Open Competition challenge for 2013 was to design and make (although the professional designers taking part may have pieces made on their behalf) a timepiece for the wall, floor, ceiling, mantelpiece, bedside, outside, outer space, underwater or anywhere else that they might consider appropriate. The judges will give consideration to size and detail, larger submissions will be favoured, also relevance to the stated purpose, originality and craftsmanship. The design might be a one-off but consideration will also be given to mass appeal and commercial viability. 

The judges are seeking originality and beauty but also innovation. Students were asked to consider what people need/want at the moment and to think about lifestyle trends. More and more people are entertaining at home: a wine chiller, a table centre piece, a modern take on the traditional vase, etc. 

Rebecca Price

Elise Head 

Loucinda Nims

April Paterson

Claire Hughes

Dartington Crystal Competition Winners

Product Presentation…

Clockwise from top left: Richard Haliday,
Hilary Green, Lucinda Newbound, Rebecca Price

Today was an exciting day for the three finalists of the Dartington Crystal for competition.

A five am set off saw Rebecca Price and Lucinda Newbound driving down to devon armed with the finalists product collections. The work being shown was that of students Rebecca Price, Rebekah Davies and Lucinda Newbound. 

This journey was the culmination of months of work, planning, model making, prototype creation, glass blowing, CAD design and material experiments. It has been a phenomenal opportunity for the successful students to showcase their design, product development and presentation skills. 

Rebecca Price

Lucinda Newbound

The proposed products were presented, demonstrated and explained to head designer Hillary Green and company director Richard Halliday. Their enthusiasm and insight was invaluable and the response to the collections was very positive. All the work was praised for innovation, trend awareness and attention to detail. 

All work has now been left with Dartington for submission to the new products team in late January. We look forward to find out what might happen next and wish the three students the best of luck. 

Rebekah Davie

Rebecca Price

Lucinda Newbound

Enterprise Bucks Winners

3D Contemporary Craft and Products Students celebrate at Bucks New University’s Enterprise Festival gala awards

Claire Hughes and Rebecca Price have once again proven their outstanding commitment and innovative skills.

Tonight Buckinghamshire New University held the gala awards night for its annual Enterprise Festival with guest speaker Mike Clare of Dreams. This event marks the end of a month long festival of seminars and real life competitions requiring hard work and commitment from those involved. 

Students took part in a range of competitions with Claire and Rebecca both entering the Enterprise Challenge and Claire also entering the Charity Challenge. 

These competitions have required both students to engage in a range of activities such as business planning, profit forecasting, product placement and much more. They have completed this in addition to their already demanding studies - An achievement in itself. 

Tonight the achievements were even greater with Claire Hughes and Rebecca Price both being awarded fantastic runners-up prizes for their business proposals with a £300 prize each! 

Claire Hughes

Claire Hughes amazed still further:

In addition to these incredible achievements Claire Hughes also succeeded in winning the overall prize for the Charity Challenge by a significant margin. She raised a phenomenal £390 for Dementia UK and was awarded a £150 Amazon voucher. 

It has been a night of success and achievement for some very talented and determined members of the 3D Contemporary Craft and Products Course. 

Claire Hughes

Claire Hughes and Rosie Keating
of Dementia UK

Winning Entry from Claire Hughes

Claire Hughes - Unadorned Blossom

Winning Entry from Claire Hughes -

An Innovative Diamond & White Gold
Convertible Pendant. 

Beautifully designed pendant. 
Set with a single 0.25ct certificated marquise diamond as the focal point. Suspended in the middle of an 18ct white gold oval which can be removed allowing the diamond to be worn alone. 


Great statement necklace that can be converted very easily to suit your outfit. Additional rings can be made in rose or yellow gold allowing you to change the overall look of your necklace. (Please note that the chain is not included).

"Talented local student Claire Hughes..."

This pendant was designed by talented local student Claire Hughes and was the winner of Michael Jones 2013 Jewellery Live competition which is run by their head goldsmith for the Bucks New University students. This year the brief was to create a diamond pendant that complemented the Michael Jones Jeweller market and had to fit within a specified budget. 


This was a great learning curve for the bucks students, not only did they have the experience of designing with precious metals and gemstones in mind, they also had a chance to have their design for sale in a jewellers showroom. A big step for any aspiring designer. This year the finalists Dovydas, Claire Hughes, Lucinda Newbound and Rebecca Price each had their designs made up in silver before being voted on by Michael Jones Jeweller staff members. 
The winner and the two runners up shared a prize of £1000 which they used to further their design experience, purchase materials for their courses and to further fulfil their design potential. 

Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery Shop Commission

The redevelopment of Shrewsbury’s Music Hall as a cutting edge venue for tourism, heritage and the arts is due to open in the spring 2014. This unique space will play host to one of the West Midlands foremost venues for contemporary art.

Shrewsbury museum has invited our 3D Contemporary Crafts and Products students at Bucks New University to develop ideas for a range of commercial artefacts to be sold through their museum shop.

The brief focused thematically upon Shrewsbury’s heritage and history and the interpretation of its museum collections.

That’s the spirit

Goldsmiths' award winners  left to right:
 Claire Hughes, Lucinda Newbound, Loucinda Nims

Our Second-year BA (Hons) 3D Contemporary Crafts & Products student Lucinda Newbound has won second prize in The Goldsmiths' Company Young Designer Silversmith Award working to a brief to design a drinking set for an alcoholic spirit.

Fellow second-year students Claire Hughes and Loucinda Nims received commendations.

Lucinda will be spending a day working with top silversmith Clive Burr at The Goldsmiths’ Centre.

Course leader Andreas Fabian said:

“This is an extremely prestigious competition so all three students have done fantastically well to be recognised and a day working with such a well-regarded figure as Clive Burr represents a great opportunity for Lucinda.”

Michael Jones Jewellers Competition

Loucinda Nims

Competition Entries Finalised...

The Michael Jones Jewellers competition consisted of a fabulous brief to design a pendant for sale in store. It gave students complete free reign for sources of inspiration and research. This has been an exciting and challenging project. 

The brief set allowed huge creative freedom while also invoking a strict budget with the requirement to include both gold and diamonds. The final designs were required to viably retail at £895 which meant a strict and limiting budget for materials and significant size and volume restrains.  The brief was made yet more challenging because designs had to be created using CAD software. The software used was Rhino and designs can be rapid prototyped using modern 3D print technology. 

Lucinda Newbound

Dovydas Pocius

The resulting work has been innovative, evocative and wonderfully unique. The CAD files will now be sent off to Michael Jones Jewellers for the initial judging stage. Finalist will be chosen on the basis of design boards and their work will be prototyped for final judgement. Good luck to Everyone! 

Rebecca Price

Claire Hughes