Tag Archives: Richard Moon

Artists, My Story

Taking a shine to silver

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“You could be my silver spring
Blue green colours flashin’
I would be your only dream
Your shining autumn, ocean crashing…”

Apart from these lyrics by singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks in her song Silver Spring, silver didn’t really factor in my life until the weekend I undertook a two-day ring-making workshop with my parter in February 2007.

Under the guidance and encouragement of Sondi at her bushland studio in the Blue Mountains, Richard and I learned to cut, forge and connect this precious metal into lasting keepsakes.

The sterling-silver ring I made for him remains the only piece of jewellery I’m ever likely to create, whereas Sondi saw an innate skill in Richard and invited him back to learn more technique. This began his transition from chef to artisan.

Years later, when we started trading at artisanal markets and events, I picked up some of the language of silver jewellery in order to assist buyers. I came to understand the investment value of sterling silver, its enduring attraction as a precious metal, and the ancient art of transforming it into pieces that last a lifetime.

Now, ahead of Silver Spring, an entire season of silver jewellery workshops at The Makers Shed (the open studio Richard and I run at Deepwater in northern inland NSW), I’m revisiting what I’ve learned about this beautiful material.

A sterling job

Unless they’re transformed into an alloy, precious metals tend to be fairly soft and malleable, unsuitable for everyday use. In the case of silver, when it’s refined into an alloy of 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent other metals (usually copper), it becomes sterling silver, one of the world’s most durable combinations, stamped with a 925 to denote its chemical makeup. The price for this strength is tarnishing, so one of the handiest extras to buy from your jeweller is a silver polishing cloth!

You get what you pay for

There are plenty of jewellery products on the market professing to be silver, particularly online. “Designed in Australia, made by hand in (insert country of your choice)” is a very common descriptor of silver jewellery that appears to be more affordable. As always: buyer beware. What you think you’re purchasing may not be what it claims, even if it’s stamped 925. In Australia, it’s illegal to use any precious metal stamp that does not match the chemical combination of the alloy. This is as good a reason as any to invest in local jewellery offered by a reputable artisan or jewellery business. You’ll need to pay more, but let’s look at why.

Silver stocks

Unless you’re trading in silver, you might be unaware that its a commodity listed on global stock markets. Not being an investor, I never really paid attention to the nightly market report, but across the decade I’ve co-run a silver jewellery business I’ve witnessed the dramatic rise of silver prices. Customer expectation for competitive retail prices for Richard’s work exists in the same economy as the ever-rising cost for his raw materials. It’s a testament to his love of what he does that his prices have not inflated at anywhere near the same rate as silver costs. That includes the sterling-silver he includes in the cost of his regular workshops.

Ethical source

Another reason for higher costs for silver jewellery created by Richard Moon is that he purchases raw sterling-silver materials from Palloys, a company that prides itself on the highest ethical and environmental standards in the production of a range of precious metal alloys. Their products are mined in Australia and refined in Sydney (where workplace governance ensures proper payment to workers in the supply chain), and a large component of their range is derived from carefully recycled silver. According to Chris Botha, operations manager at Palloys, the company is, “Australia’s only jewellery manufacturer that can trace its precious metal supply directly to its primary source.” Its reputation rests on a clientele that includes royal families, religious and sporting organisations, international banks and Australian artisan jewellers.

Pieces of the Moon

Those who’ve purchased a Richard Moon original, or been gifted one, will know that his maker’s mark very much represents his name. Every one of his pieces is stamped with a crescent moon symbol and, if it’s been created in sterling-silver, the 925 stamp will be somewhere very close by.

Silver Spring

So if you’ve taken a shine to silver, Richard is offering an opportunity under the banner Silver Spring for anyone wanting to learn a bit of silver-jewellery technique. The more workshops you book, the less you’ll pay. Book one place, or book several; bring a friend or come solo, you’re welcome to celebrate silver this spring!

Silver Spring with Richard Moon Wearable Silver & Silverware at The Makers Shed, Deepwater. Book now.

Books, Rebels

Capturing the Moon on a Spoon

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IT IS A PRIVILEGE to witness someone transform their life. When he’s your spouse and you watch him take on his life’s work as a result of the change, it’s awe-inspiring.

When I first met Richard Moon in the very late 1990s, he was flipping burgers at a Katoomba fundraising event. The chef and co-manager of a popular local eatery at the time, we moved in different circles.

By the time our relationship started a few years later, Richard had become one of a community of hospitality workers who powered the renowned cuisine of the Blue Mountains during the boom of tourism that revived the region in the 1990s and 2000s.

More comfortable with his job title being ‘cook’, never ‘chef’, he was working at a Thai restaurant on Leura Mall. Within months, he and his collaborator had started a new business in the same building. 

BOLD BRAND The Red Door Café, Leura.

A hallmark of our 20-year marriage has been working together, a matter of doing what’s needed at the time. So I joined the crew who helped renovate, and put my design skills into creating the business’s branding, before The Red Door Café opened its fire-engine scarlet entranceway in 2006.

Working seven days a week while renovating our first home and garden in north Leura took a swift toll on Richard. It was therefore an easy decision for him to apply for a position as sous chef-trainer at the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School in 2007. After years in commercial kitchens, the thought of stepping into a vocational training environment threw him a little, but Richard is a natural teacher (from a family of educators), and the new role gave him the opportunity to fall in love with food all over again through sharing his skills.

It was during this period that Richard and I began another business collaboration, when I got my first editing job for Blue Mountains Life, the region’s lifestyle magazine. We decided to visit food producers, from beef, oyster and truffle farmers to chocolatiers and orchardists, in order to impart the message of going to source wherever possible.

For a pair of farmer’s sons, this was a taste of our origins.

I’ll never forget the love and admiration shown to Richard from students on his final day at the hotel school. He’d never been an aloof teacher in an office somewhere, he’d worked in the trenches alongside these young people from across the world, and they were thankful for the camaraderie and the inspiration. Richard is still in touch with many of them.

In 2012, not long after moving to Queensland, Richard and I were dining at a winery at Mount Cotton when I asked what he really wanted to do if it wasn’t cooking. He’d struggled to get a chef’s position in his home state, and his courageous answer was that he was keen to try jewellery making as a career. 

SILVER STYLE Richard Moon at his workbench.

Not working in a high-street eatery had given him a few years of headspace to pick up a bit of silver-working technique at Sondi’s Studio in Wentworth Falls. I’d seen from his experimentation that he had a natural ability.

He set up a small jewellery workshop in our outer Brisbane home and has rarely looked back, until the process of putting this book together.

Doing so, we were amazed at the arc of our collaborative  creative life, the ingredients and method that went into it.

It delights me that Richard often uses chef’s tools for silver-working: his oyster shucker is still employed at his workbench, and he relies on a brûlée torch for soldering during his regular mobile jewellery workshops.

His jam-making spoon has quite a history. At a business contents sale in the early 2000s, when Bodds Café Katoomba was closing, I snapped up a well-loved wooden spoon which the vendor told me had been used by the former chef/owner. As we moved into our first home, we realised Richard had inherited that very spoon in 1996 – ends burnt, bowl well-worn, and stained orange from years of being used with spices – when he and his former Bodds colleagues took over the premises of an Indian restaurant. This beloved implement has been in our lives for three decades and is still used for jam making, the perfect symbol for this book.

BUY NOW

Moon on a Spoon is part-memoir, part-cookbook, a means of explaining how Richard adapted to changes in cooking styles and shifts in the hospitality industry. It’s also an account of how to alter the trajectory of a life by taking new pathways and giving dreams cooking time.

An extract from Moon on a Spoon: Recipes from a creative life, out now from High Country Books.

Art, Artists

Handmade for the holidays

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“People should never be shy of signing up for a workshop and having a go.”

LEARNING A NEW creative skill can be a big step for busy people, so there’s no better time than the holidays to make a plan to attend a workshop; and Glen Innes at the heart of the NSW New England region is the destination for handmade.

STONE SETTING Precision work on a pendant.

Resident silversmith at The Makers Shed, Richard Moon has been teaching metalworking and jewellery-making techniques for four years, and runs regular full or half-day courses for beginners and those with a few skills at the Glen Innes venue.

“I thoroughly enjoy helping people realise their visions in jewellery form,” he says. “It’s always a reminder of how I started out. Attending a two-day ring-making workshop in 2007 really set me on my course to becoming a full-time silversmith”.

“It really is possible to design and make a piece of jewellery in just one day,” he says. “We have all the equipment here at The Makers Shed, and if you want to bring a friend or two along, we have six silversmithing benches ready for your workshop. I’m here to ensure everyone goes home with a unique handmade experience under their belt, and a special piece to wear or give as a gift. You’ll sleep well that night, because even though the process doesn’t take up much space, it’s extremely challenging on the mind!”

CUTTING EDGE Printmaker Nadia Kliendanze finds inspiration in the everyday.

Also giving an upcoming workshop at The Makers Shed is Inverell’s award-winning printmaker Nadia Kliendanze, whose exhibition ‘Printed Matter Only’ is showing throughout the summer.

“I love to teach printmaking and linoprinting in particular, which is my favourite print medium,” Nadia says. “Beginners usually catch on fairly quickly. Those that already have an artistic practice of some sort create their own original linoprints, however, I have a selection of images that complete beginners can use. After all, it’s about learning the process, not learning to draw”.

“I undertook a Diploma of Fine Arts at my local TAFE and discovered printmaking,” she says. “I was initially attracted to the media because of its graphic nature and also the fact that it was an easy way to share my artworks with lots of people at a reasonable cost”.

PRINTED MATTER ONLY St Stephen’s Green, linoprint by Nadia Kliendanze.

“Later on when I undertook a visual arts degree and a masters in printmaking at Monash University I continued to work more intensely in that medium.”

Nadia’s exhibition encompasses botanical motifs, iconic destinations in Australia and Europe and often references well-known prints from the past, such as Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave’, but she also turns her attentions to the everyday.

“Sometimes I create a print out of something I have seen on my morning walk,” she says.

HANDMADE HEAVEN Ceramicist Anita Stewart is a member of Glen Innes Pottery Club.

Glen Innes-based ceramicist and potter Anita Stewart regularly has work on show at The Makers Shed, and is gearing up to share her skills over the summer at the Glen Innes Pottery Club, situated like the Shed on Grey Street, the town’s main drag.

“Discovering clay for me was like a fish taking to water,” she says. “I studied Fine Arts in Western Australia for three years. Like many artists, I had been practicing before I actually decided to do formal training. At Fremantle Tech I did units in painting design and drawing, then in 1995 I travelled to the New England region and discovered the wonderful ceramics courses run by Max Powell at the Glen Innes TAFE”.

“The inspiration to create a new body of work usually comes when working on new forms at the wheel. For instance, the last federal election inspired my ‘message in a bottle’ series. Using the surface of the pot as a canvas I add multiple layers to create an image that speaks. The New England Landscape has also given me great inspiration for my work.”

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE Ceramic vases by Anita Stewart.

According to Anita, the Glen Innes Pottery Club was established about 30 years ago, and has remained a vibrant part of the community. “Lots of well-known potters have been a part of the club,” she says.

Winner of multiple awards for her ceramics, Anita laughs when asked to define what it takes to be a practicing artist, adding that “stamina, determination and absolute passion” are essentials for anyone wanting to make a long-term career of creativity; although she believes people should never be shy of signing up for a workshop and having a go.

“It’s really nice teaching people how to work with clay because it’s a very tactile medium and they usually seem really pleased when they’ve created a functional and colourful work of art,” she says. “The wheel can be a bit more of a challenge, but they are overjoyed when they manage to throw a pot on the wheel.”

A complete range of handmade work by artisans from across the New England region is always available at The Makers Shed, and a regular schedule of creative workshops.

www.themakersshed.org