Hand Quilt by Sophia Bassett

Jewelry

Enamel, copper, second-hand fabric, red thread, red yarn

2 in. x 4 in.

I work in the space between the functional and the intimate, where objects lose their usefulness and become something other. Enamel allows me to linger in that threshold. Its fragile surface, translates softness into glass and warmth into metal. The ‘handquilt’, tied to care and domestic labor is reimagined in a material that’s heavy presence conforms to the hand, as if it was pocketed in the warmth of a loved one’s hand.
My practice moves between jewelry, sculpture, and textile processes, collapsing boundaries between adornment and furniture, body and object. By flattening, pressing, and shifting scale, I search for moments when the familiar becomes estranged: when a chair folds into a brooch, or when a quilt stiffens into glass and metal. In these transformations, enamel becomes a way to breathe new life into domestic forms.