We ask Isobel Thom three questions about the new jewellery storage system she's made for Cook & Company.

What kind of life (real or imagined) does jewellery have within your storage system?

It has a very quiet life in there, the jewellery. It lives under the illusion that it is protected by the structure, but in reality you could just hit it with a hammer and it would be completely vulnerable.


What informed your response to the brief? 

I am still thinking about modular structures, a continuation of the brick wall project that was exhibited last year at Objectspace in Toro Whakaara. I am trying to make a simpler module this time, using a few small repeated shapes to make a larger structure.


What is your relationship with jewellery?

I don’t really have any jewellery, apart from a few sleeper earrings which are stored in my ears.


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More about Isobel Thom

Born in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Isobel Thom graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 1990 from the University of Auckland, then lived and worked in New York from 1995 to 2005. She returned to Elam to undertake a doctorate in Fine Arts, from which she graduated in 2011. She has been developing functional ceramics over the last decade that are informed by her previous practice as a painter. Thom has exhibited widely and has work held in notable private collections and the permanent collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. She is currently building a small house/studio in rural west Tāmaki Makaurau that incorporates much of her recent output — a built exemplar of Thom’s resourceful and novel applications of clay.