Makers Who Shaped Me: Mark Fenn and the Stories We Make in Metal
There comes a point in the life of a metalsmith when learning how to make something is no longer enough.
You know how to solder the seam.
You know how to form the metal.
You understand stone setting, fabrication, finishing, proportion, construction, and all of the countless little decisions that happen at the bench.
And then another question begins to creep into the work:
What am I actually trying to say?
That question is one of the reasons I find the work and thinking of British jeweler, educator, curator, and writer Mark Fenn so compelling.
Fenn has been making jewelry for more than thirty years and studied silversmithing and jewelry design at the University for the Creative Arts in the UK. He describes himself as a maker and curator of narrative jewelry, and the narrative and the personal are central to his studio practice. (Goldsmiths' Centre)
But what interests me most about him isn't really his résumé.
It is the way he asks us to think about jewelry.
Jewelry Doesn't Have to Stop at Decoration
Fenn's work sits within the world of narrative jewelry — jewelry created not simply as an ornament, but as a vehicle for ideas, memories, experiences, beliefs, emotions, or stories.
That distinction matters.
A beautifully fabricated brooch can be admired for its craftsmanship.
A beautifully fabricated brooch carrying a personal narrative can ask something more of us.
It can make us uncomfortable.
It can remind us of something we've forgotten.
It can make us wonder what happened before the moment represented in the object—or what might happen afterward.
It can mean one thing to the maker, something slightly different to the wearer, and something else entirely to the person encountering it across a gallery.
Fenn's teaching around narrative jewelry specifically considers this relationship between maker, wearer, and viewer, along with symbolism, personal expression, jewelry language, and the development of a narrative design concept. (jewellerytraining)
I love that.
Because it removes the expectation that the maker has to explain everything.
Sometimes the work only has to open the door.
When Jewelry Becomes a Way of Processing Experience
One of the things I find particularly powerful about Fenn's approach is that narrative isn't something artificially placed on top of the jewelry after the object has been designed.
The story can be the beginning.
In discussing his own practice, Fenn has described using personal narrative as the starting point of the making process, drawing on genuine emotions and experiences that can sometimes be difficult to put into words. One example is his May Brooches, connected to grief and loss. His White Horse brooch drew in part from the death of his father and imagery from Revelation, while leaving enough ambiguity for viewers to develop interpretations of their own. (Belisame Créations)
That is a very different way of approaching the bench.
Instead of beginning with:
I want to make a brooch.
You might begin with:
I want to talk about loss.
Or:
I want to talk about memory.
Protection.
Identity.
Repair.
Belonging.
And suddenly the questions change.
What material carries that idea?
Should the form feel heavy or fragile?
Should something be hidden?
Should something appear damaged?
Should the viewer understand the meaning immediately—or have to search for it?
Should the piece reveal everything?
Maybe it shouldn't. Those questions can create far more interesting jewelry than simply deciding whether something ought to be round or square.
Narrative Jewelry: Tales from the Toolbox
Book cover: Narrative Jewelry: Tales from the Toolbox by Mark Fenn. Learn more about Mark Fenn and his work on Instagram
Fenn expanded this conversation far beyond his own work with his 2017 book, Narrative Jewelry: Tales from the Toolbox.
The book grew out of research Fenn began while studying jewelry with a message. What developed from that research became an enormous international exploration of narrative jewelry. According to a review published by the Gemological Institute of America, Fenn's call to artists attracted work from roughly 350 jewelry artists and approximately 1,500 submitted images. The finished book includes 450 photographs representing 241 makers. (gia)
Think about that for a moment.
Two hundred forty-one different makers.
Two hundred forty-one different visual languages.
Two hundred forty-one different possibilities for what jewelry can communicate.
The subjects represented range widely—mortality, social issues, environmental concerns, history, feminism, illness, memory, and deeply personal experiences among them. (gia)
For a metalsmith, that kind of book isn't merely a collection of pretty objects.
It is permission.
Permission to let jewelry be strange.
Permission to let it be uncomfortable.
Permission to let it be deeply personal.
Permission to make something that doesn't exist simply because someone needs another ring or pendant.
And perhaps most importantly:
Permission to let an object mean something.
The Lesson I Take From Mark Fenn
Looking at Fenn's philosophy has made me think again about the difference between making an object and building a body of work.
An object can be beautifully made. A body of work begins asking questions. That distinction became increasingly important in my own work.
My Identity series was never simply a collection of jewelry designs. The pieces became chapters in a larger story about searching for identity through difficult circumstances and experiences. The forms, construction decisions, symbolism, and relationships between individual objects mattered because they belonged to something larger than themselves.
And lately I've been thinking about another chapter.
Not identity this time.
Becoming.
Repair.
Growth.
Remembering.
The strange process of rebuilding parts of yourself while still carrying evidence of what came before. And this is where Fenn's thinking becomes particularly meaningful to me. Narrative jewelry doesn't require us to illustrate a story literally.
A piece about repair doesn't need to depict a broken object being fixed.
Repair might appear as a seam. A scar. A rivet. A patch. A structure supporting another structure. A material that looks fragile but is unexpectedly strong. Something partially hidden. Something preserved rather than erased.
That is where metalsmithing becomes language.
The techniques we spend years mastering stop being merely techniques.
They become vocabulary.
Technique Still Matters—But It Serves Something Bigger
As someone who loves the technical side of metalsmithing, I think this is an important distinction.
Narrative jewelry isn't an excuse to ignore craftsmanship. Quite the opposite.
The better we understand our materials and processes, the larger our vocabulary becomes.
Soldering can join.
But visually, soldering can also represent repair.
Piercing can remove material.
But conceptually, absence can represent loss.
Forming can create volume.
But volume can suggest protection, enclosure, burden, or growth.
A stone can be decoration.
Or it can become memory.
A hinge can simply allow movement.
Or movement can become part of the story.
Technique gives us choices. Narrative gives those choices direction.
That may be the lesson from Mark Fenn that stays with me most.
What Are You Trying to Say?
I spend a great deal of time encouraging metalsmiths to ask technical questions.
What gauge should I use?
Where should the solder go?
How deep should I cut the seat?
Why did this bezel collapse?
Those questions matter. They are the vocabulary we need in order to become competent makers.
But eventually I think every serious maker deserves another question:
What are you trying to say?
Maybe the answer is nothing yet. That's okay. Maybe you're still learning the vocabulary.
But someday you may find yourself standing at the bench with a piece of metal in your hand and realize that you aren't simply trying to make a piece of jewelry.
You're trying to remember something.
Or question something.
Or honor someone.
Or repair something.
Or understand something.
And when that happens, jewelry becomes something entirely different.
It becomes a story we can hold.
That is why Mark Fenn belongs among the makers who have shaped the way I think about metalsmithing.
Not simply because of the jewelry he has made.
But because he reminds us to ask what the jewelry means.