From an article by Margot Coatts, Crafts magazine, March/April 2000

Stephen Bottomley is precise about things, including terminology. He calls himself a goldsmith, for instance, not a jeweller  because he does not set stones. Bottomley is 32, hardly a youngster, but he is continually re-educating himself and even now is working towards an M.Phil at the Royal College of Art.

Bottomley originally studied three-dimensional design (metals) at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, and in 1990 set up a workshop in Brighton, where he is still based. He soon found the demands of supplying a number of shops and galleries, usually on a sale or return

basis, a precarious existence and one not necessarily suited to personal development as a designer.

He considered his options and the opportunity to teach metalwork and jewellery part-time at Hastings School of Art arose. Bottomley has now worked there for eight years and finds a little teaching an excellent and rewarding complement to studio work.

In 1996, however, showing no signs of settling into a routine, and ‘determined to push my own work further’, Bottomley embarked on a two-year MA in Design (part-time) at the University of Brighton. Here he began studying computer-aided design, the basis of his current jewellery. At first wholly new to the technology and its potential, he concentrated on digital research, supervised by department head Chris Rose, making 3D experiments in his own workshop. At this time he also participated in an exchange programme, studying and working with Louis Mueller at Rhode Island School of Design for four months in 1998, and again in 1999.

Bottomley’s use of the computer for jewellery design is based mainly in the creation of two-dimensional, low-relief patterns and surface textures, mostly abstracted from things seen such as silk fabric or landscape features but also derived from portraits of individuals. These images some from photographs, some from his own computer drawings  are translated into photo-tools which are developed onto precious metals for chemical etching. Although much of his initial research concentrated on decorative surfaces, he now also uses the map-like images as templates.  For instance, his ‘ruff’ necklaces (1998-99) are made up of assembled units, derived from cut and folded sheets of metal, for which the template, marked for scoring and cutting, has been drawn digitally.

An important aspect of Bottomley’s work is its generous size or bulk but lightness in weight, making it highly wearable while still having, in the maker’s words, ‘some theatre’ about it. His red gold or silver Frame Brooches are another example of practical but arresting design. Measuring four centimetres square, the frames are literally wearable containers for photographs which happen to be etched in metal; they are designed so that photographic panels may be easily changed to suit the occasionwill it be the eye surrounded by lined flesh, or the magnolia leaf today? Stephen Bottomley likes introducing new options to jewellery practice but is certainly no computer nerd; he is a goldsmith who shows that imaginative design and craft skills are never outdated but can be fired and augmented by the judicious intervention of the computer.