Displays and Stands – a history

I’m going to take you on a tour of my market stalls and display units over the last decade. I started making jewellery in 2007. There were a lot of changes in my life – I graduated with my honours degree in 2005, then moved into full-time retail while I looked for a job that would justify my degree. In 2007, I moved from the shop floor to the office, and out of a job that gave me both the technical and creative balance that I needed. My first office job made me deeply unhappy, and then I started making earrings. A year later, I moved to a better office environment. This positive move led to my rediscovering my creative side. I started wanted to paint and draw again, and my jewellery-making ramped up.

When I first started making beaded earrings, I had no idea how to show them off – so I used a lovely old vintage tin. It was about 20cm in diameter, and I hung my little beaded earrings around the edge, until they were clustered so thickly that it was impossible to identify where one pair ended and the next began. It was time to find another resolution.

Roderick was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. I knew what I wanted, I knew my limitations, and I worked within those parameters. Roderick was all about being an earring tower for loose earrings; he was then followed by his brother, Frederick, who had panels with hooks, upon which I hung my packaged earrings and pendants.

Both displays come from the same simple design – an elongated box with a carrying handle on the top, wrapped in wire mesh, attached to a base with a lazy Susan. The whole upper segment rotates cleanly, and allowed me to use the otherwise wasted vertical space on the table.

Like a Madonna of the craft market world, I am constantly reinventing myself. Here is a quote from a post from 2010, just after I built Greg (who is now 7 years young, and still going strong!) that talks about my evolution so far.
“How you serve up your creations is just as important with crafts as it is with food.”

It’s not just packaging – it’s also about the display units. I built a variety of displays – Roderick and Frederick, then Greg, then Zavier (he’s Z-shaped). After that, I built Victoria and Albert. 

I have a couple of photos of Albert – but all my photos of that time period are locked on an inaccessible hard drive! I have no photos of Victoria that I can find, which is heartbreaking.