From coils to double loops to clusters, Janice Derrick’s Jewellery pieces are timeless. They seem to capture the elegance of nature and the geometry of the world around us.
She estimates that over the past 25 years, she has created around 20 collections, each beginning with a sketch in her notebook. Her creativity flows from leaves, flowers, bridges, or architectural motifs, gradually transforming into meticulously hand-crafted pieces of gold and silver.
In 1996, Derrick graduated from the London Guildhall University, where she studied Jewellery Silversmithing and Allied craft at the Sir John Cass faculty. She describes her work as a labour-intensive craft that doesn’t come with high returns, but she can’t envision herself doing anything else.
“People think jewellers make a lot of money; we don’t. But this is what I love doing,” she said. Her journey into jewellery-making was anything but straightforward. It was a career that she stumbled upon in her teenage years.
At 16, the former Bishop Anstey High School student moved from Trinidad to England with dreams of studying zoology, but reality intervened.
“I had this romantic idea that zoology was being out on safari and studying animals and their behaviours,” Derrick chuckled.
“But when I drilled into it more, I met a zoologist who said there are very few jobs in the field, and I’d probably end up in agriculture. So I pivoted.”
After A-Levels, she had done a foundation art course that covered ceramics, textiles, photography, graphic design, and 3D design.
“For me, it eventually became a toss-up between photography and 3D design. I chose 3D design and worked with wood, plaster of Paris, and wire; you know, just playing around with it. But my love for photography has continued alongside it the whole way. I am an amateur photographer, and my phone has about 15,000 photos on it, so it’s a huge investment for me to buy a new phone because I have to get one with a lot of memory. That doesn’t happen very often.”
Her love affair with creating jewellery started after a visit to the British Museum, where she was able to see the ancient Egyptian and Etruscan jewellery up close. This sealed her fate.
“Even though my jewellery is not like it, it captivated me; that rich, raw gold and the motif that inspired the life around it. I thought, ‘Ooh, this is kind of what I want to do.’ So I started asking the tutors at college, and one of them turned out to be a jeweller,” with whom she worked in a makeshift studio during their lunch times. He showed me the basics of what I needed to know.”
All her jewellery is handmade, and her favourite metal is gold, ideally 22 carats. But because of the escalating price of gold, she now uses quite a bit of 18 carats.
“But even that is prohibitive because of the cost. Sterling silver is fine too,” she said with a laugh.
The starting points of her collections are drawings in her sketchbooks–mainly inspired by nature and man-made structures.
“Plants, leaves, flowers etc, architecture, bridges. Sometimes I combine the two things.”
She started Janice Derrick Jewellery in 1997 in London, and from 2002 to 2004, enjoyed sharing her jewellery-making knowledge with students at Lambeth College. She returned to Trinidad and Tobago in 2005.
Derrick has exhibited extensively and sold her jewellery in T&T, Europe, the US and UK, Australia, and Japan, and her work has been featured in a number of local and international newspapers and magazines.
“I don’t do as many exhibits as I would like to. When I lived in England, I would have about 12 a year. If I do two now, that’s a lot.”
She told WE magazine, “I showed two of my newest collections at Paintings In the Garden,” a charitable fundraising art exhibit held at the Central Bank Museum from August 28 to September 9 this year. Part of the proceeds was donated to the Serenity Place Empowerment Centre for Women in Guapo.
“One of them (collections) I started this year for an online exhibit, but I was limited to a certain number of pieces. So I am actually expanding on that collection right now.”
Some of those pieces will be showcased at Bits and Pieces artisan market at MovieTowne, Port-of-Spain, on November 1.
Derrick’s studio is located downstairs in her home, so during the COVID-19 pandemic, her work continued, albeit on a smaller scale.
“In the beginning, it was fine. After the kids were finished with online school, I came down and did some work. I had built a relationship with a supplier in the US and had material shipped through my sky box. I only ordered small amounts, but business-wise, those were some of the most profitable years I have had. I guess because people couldn’t travel, so they bought local.”
Customised pieces, she said, form a huge chunk of her work, and she is hoping to expand her customer base to include more regional and international sales.
“Right now I’m trying to get my website up and running, and I’m planning that when my kids have flown the nest in the next couple of years, I’ll have more dedicated time in the studio.”
