Cast in bone

Cuttlefish bones washed up on our shores have been used to make jewellery since ancient times. Jo Caird meets a craftswoman who's keeping the art alive on the Kent coast

- Jo Caird

There's an expectant air amid the creative clutter in the Margate studio of jeweller Jayne Fowler. Treasures and curios are everywhere I look - Jayne's favourite pieces from her time studying jewellery and silversmithing at London Metropolitan University; artworks by her assistant and friend Tom Duff; a set of vintage jewellery benches picked up online - all offering clues to the fizzing aesthetic sensibility that informs the beautiful creations Jayne crafts here.

Wooden cases filled with gold and silver rings line those benches, their shining contents displaying the irregular forms and organic textures for which Jayne has become known. These rings - each one unique - are the products of an ancient process known as cuttlefish casting.

"There are millions of techniques in jewellery, but I was addicted to cuttlefish casting from the get-go," says Jayne. "I'm inspired by the textures, by the natural flow that created them."

People have been using cuttlefish bones for small-scale casting for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, thanks to the fact these bones were a readily available, free resource washed up on beaches. Perfect for the job, cuttlebones are made of aragonite a form of calcium carbonite that withstands very high temperatures.

It was at university that Jayne first learned how to carve a void into a cuttlefish bone, pour in molten metal, wait for it to cool and then prise free the resulting object, raw and unpolished a lump of precious metal shaped by what's been removed. The process has powered her creativity ever since. "It's a surprise every time - and that's what keeps me wanting to do it," she says. "It's so unpredictable."