Artist doing precious things with metal

EVERY angle and curve of each piece of metal tells a story. They almost, with their meandering shapes, map the path it took to get here . . . to this place and time. Intertwined with each piece is a passion, a love for the art, the craft and the time honoured techniques used to hone them. Every facet of a semi-precious stone glitters with the hopes of the artist. Hopes that one day he can bring back the prestige once accorded prized pieces of jewellery.In the atelier of jewellery designer Keith Shepherd, his hands go to work bringing those hopes to life with every exquisite piece he produces.“There was a time when we used to think of jewellery, we used to think of it as being very expensive, more of a family heirloom kind of thing . . . I think today that we are losing that,” laments Shepherd.Being at the helm of Christian Friis, which opened its doors last November, is a far cry from what he initially intended when he embarked on what would turn out to be a seven-year sojourn to England – where he had delusions of studying economics.  He was driven there by the frustration of not being able to actualise one of his initial ideas for business. Shepherd, who came to Barbados from Guyana at 16, started making jewellery with his mother who sold her pieces on the tourist market. The eldest of nine children found it fascinating to see his work on people he passed in the street.At 18, he sent some of his coconut shell work to the United States with a friend of his father’s who returned with a tall order: 1.2 million pairs of earrings and 120 000 bags.When he couldn’t secure start-up capital from financial institutions to get his venture off the ground, Shepherd tossed in his limited tools, packed up his bags and left for England to embark on a “sensible” career.Being able to now look back and laugh, Shepherd mused: “At that point, I don’t think there were coconuts in all Barbados to get that done.”While in England, life took a twist which saw Shepherd abandoning economics for theology. At another curve along the path, he found his way to Denmark where he stayed for five years.Life came full circle when he returned to Barbados in 2007 to help his mother with some coconut pieces. “She wanted help, I wanted a break from the stuff I was doing in Denmark. She paid for a ticket, I got a holiday in the sun . . . it’s December . . . I going and work in paradise,” Shepherd jokes. And that is when he, like a good piece of jewellery, was discovered. “Someone saw my stuff on the Internet . . . asked if I could come give him a showing. He was totally blown away by the quality of the work and by the range – there are about 300 techniques that I can apply to wire or metal to create different textures and different types of jewellery.” He returned to Barbados in 2009 with his wife Birte and three sons – Joshua, David and Caleb in tow – brimming with ideas for the stuff of his dreams: jewellery.The market, for Shepherd, turned out to be almost as pliable as some of his metals – which made breaking in easy. “We have a passion for jewellery, a passion for dressing we like to look flamboyant. I think it is a Caribbean thing, not just Barbados. We like to look good,” he asserted. And this is what brings people right to his door at Mall 39 in The City. Here is where he puts all the research he did on jewellery making in Denmark and his training to use creating signature pieces.“I innovate and mix and blend stuff to create different looks. I try to keep things specific to the individual. If I’ve learnt anything from fashion design is that women want to look individual . . . special. They don’t want to look like they came out of a mould or like a clone. They don’t want to wear anything that someone else is wearing either as they don’t want to compete for the same attention,” said Shepherd.The jewellery designer, who readily admits that he favours the chain weaving and braiding techniques, has hopes for the future which extend beyond the jewellery he currently makes and the classes he teaches. “I’m beginning to realise there is a high-end market that is seeking after this kind of quality. So I’m looking to pursue that. I prefer to make really luxurious pieces, really one-of-a-kind pieces that really tell a story.”  “It is one thing to make jewellery and sell jewellery, but what was more powerful, was the inspirational element. The element that pushes you a tiny bit further, to do better to create new things, to innovate and that happened to me when I was asked to put some jewellery on the runway. And I only chose one piece because I only thought that one piece I had was good enough.”He chose the Japanese chain mail piece.“It seemed to me, and I might be exaggerating, but every member in the audience went to the edge of their seat just to see clearly what was coming.“There was a huge screen, he [the camera man] zoomed in on the piece, and then you could, and then again it might be my imagination, but I thought that they exhaled. “That was so powerful, I went home at 11 p.m. and was up again at 3 a.m. [after] dreaming of all the fascinating jewellery I’m going to make for the rest of eternity,” Shepherd beamed. Henceforth his motto became: “To do new things, create new textures, to do old things better . . . ”.