What's in a name...?

Do you name your jewellery or other creative designs?

Dragonheart

I do and have done since I started publishing pictures of them, but I've never consciously thought about why I do it. Certainly, before I became involved with art jewellery I'd never bought any named pieces. I think it's probably something I adopted from the the glass bead artists I buy my lampwork beads from because a lot of them name their beads. After all, it could get a bit dull to list your work as 'blue beads 32' or 'another set of green beads' and would seriously underplay these gorgeous goodies.

Mother Earth by Clare Scott

Hawaii 5 - 0 by Kaz Baildon

Then there's the process of how you go about naming pieces. The heart pendant at the top of this post was fairly easy...the glass blend used for the decoration was called Dragons Breathe and to me it had a medieval/fantasy feel so, Dragonheart seemed both obvious and appropriate.

Sometimes I've had a name for a piece before I've made it or even knew what it would look like. The name for the piece below came to me as soon as I'd made the Bronzclay focal using a section of sea urchin shell and was actually the inspiration for  the design of the piece as a whole. This is far more detailed and 'costume' oriented than my normal work and a real departure for me.

Neptune's Garden

And of course, there are times when I feel less inspired and on these occasions I usually end up giving a descriptive rather than imaginative name.

Pretty Bubbles

Earlier this week, the Guild of Jewellery Designers published an article entitled '40 Incentives to name your jewellery' by Marthe Le Van, which made interesting reading. Some of them are quite obvious...

• Titles convey that an item is one-of-a-kind
• Titles make your jewellery seem complete
• Titles can set a mood...establish a context...communicate a vision...

But, had I been asked, I don't think I would ever have come up with a list of 40 reasons even though, when you think about it, they all seem perfectly logical and sensible. The full article can be found here.

So, do you name your designs... do you think it's important... can you think of more than 40 reasons?! I love it when people leave me comments so I'd really like to hear what you think about this and how you go about naming your products.

By Nia Clements

Have a great weekend all.

Lesley