Satellite by Stephen Bottomley

Artist list

Stephen Bottomley

Stephen Bottomley was born in 1967, two years before the Apollo 11 moon landing. The space age has remained a constant and steady influence on his craft through digital manufacture, CAD design, and the wider cultural influence of science fiction. The history of jewellery inspires jewellery collections as an art form from the Ancient and Classical world to modern times.

Works are made from a range of manmade materials:
Egyptian faience: a low-fire mixture of ceramic materials containing clay, sand, colorants, frits, and soluble salts traces
Copper Metal Foam: developed for use by NASA in their rocket engines and heat exchangers, enamelled
Diamond dust: a by-product of industrial tool-making
Sintered alloys: materials made from the 3D powder metallurgy process known as sintering. Including Aluminium alloys

As the Moon Impact exhibition explores the history of the universe through the lenses of geology and mineralogy, my work in Satellite aims to respond to the diversification of materials in the 20th and 21st Centuries, inspired by Space age technologies and innovations while reflecting on the impact of the synthetic materials on the new Anthropocene.
/ Stephen Bottomley

Professor Stephen Bottomley is the Head of the School of Design at Glasgow School of Art.  Previously, he led the schools of Jewellery and Fashion and Textiles at Birmingham City University (2017-2021) and the Department of Jewellery and Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art (2008-17), as well as teaching at a range of other Universities for over thirty years.
As a contemporary jeweller, his works are in the National Museums of Scotland, the British Museum and the Cominelli Foundation Collection in Italy. His work combines ancient jewellery-making techniques with evolving and contemporary materials and technologies. It references the rhythm and patterns found in oriental motifs and mathematical geometry through layers of embossed repetitive patterns and textures made from vitreous enamel combined with metals and other industrial materials. 

Bottomley has curated exhibitions and inter-disciplinary projects in Chicago, Lake Garda, Beijing, Shanghai and Munich. A past chairman of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery (2005-07), he is a member of the Associazione Gioiello Contemporaneo and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths since 2017.


>> Special event during the Munich Jewellery Week: Wednesday 28th February 2024 from 5 to 7 pm.