How I started.

This guy: artist, photographer, sculptor, jewellery maker Ken Raffe.

When I was in my late teens I met Ken through my sister and mother, both of whom were far more serious about their art making than I was at that time. Having followed art as my main hobby (thinking it could never be something I made money from, even after a fine arts certificate at TAFE) I dabbled in a bit of sculpture in his studio.

Flash forward 9 years later to 2004 and I began to feel I’d pushed my creativity to the side, and I returned to Ken’s Saturday studio, this time with the idea to learn the basics in creating sterling silver jewellery. Again I was thinking it would be just a hobby to satisfy the creative fire, till I took my first visit to Melbourne in 2007, wearing the first ever necklace I’d made and a stranger in the street fell in love with it and bought it from me.

That was my push to start along a path of getting more serious about my art, though by then I was midway through a writing degree, so again jewellery making had to idle away, tended to only on Saturdays.

In 2011, still in Australia, I built my jewellery studio with the inheritance I received from my grandmother. I got to use that studio it for 6 months before I moved to Italy in June 2012. I attended Ken’s Saturday morning classes right up until I left for Italy. I visited he and his partner Dixie – another talented artist and jewellery maker –  in January this year at their home in Bundanoon. Ken will turn 89 this year, and is still producing an incredible amount of jewellery and art from his studio.