'A little bit of magic': Stobo jeweller making Celtic torcs

Linda Lewin, 69, who has latterly also found success as an author, opened her Stobo jewellery workshop to the Peeblesshire News to talk about her craft.

And part of that art which really fascinates Linda is spending a fortnight of eight-hour days, steadily hammering out a gold Celtic torc using an antler as an anvil.

She said: “Between 1,200 and 1,000 years before the current era (BCE) Celts made ribbon torcs shaped like DNA, in a double helix, where the centre line of the metal is shorter than the outside edge.

“I enjoy looking at ancient and classical techniques, we assume torcs were worn as jewellery but they might have been sewn into clothes.

“We only discovered how torcs were made when an American jeweller and an Irishman discovered the ancient Celts were using the bend in an antler to create the shape.

“When I am making a torc it feels like a little bit of magic and it is somehow as if the Celts discovered DNA but could not describe it.”

The double helix design of one of Linda's torcs (Image: Mark Davey)

Linda said that you start with a strip of metal, usually gold and you think: “I am going to twist it”, but just a tube is created, what is needed is to shrink the centre line.

“Once you get into the hammering process you don’t want to stop and each blow overlaps like tiles”, said Linda.

“You expect to stretch metal by hammering but you can also shrink it.

“You don’t need complicated tools, my steel and plastic hammers wear out long before the antler.”

Linda was brought up in Glasgow until age 12 when her family moved to Surrey and she went to a grammar school where her sanctuary was the art room.

“At grammar school words were important but for me at that stage they were difficult and I am sure now I would have been called dyslexic”, said Linda.

“People are allowed to say I cannot do maths, or art but you are not allowed to say I can’t do English.

“Education tries to divide art and science when the disciplines should be united.

Linda with one of her creations (Image: Mark Davey)

“Creative arts and design technology should be together but it is often awkward to take physics and art as there are timetable clashes.

“People tell me: ‘You have talent dribbling out of you fingers’, but it is in my brain.

“Solving a jewellery puzzle is about analysing the problem, collecting information, informed decision making, which is applicable to any kind of design, making it fit the purpose and ‘tell the story’.

“Of course there are craft skills which need to be learned, such as very fine tolerances which often can only be felt with your fingers.

“I needed permission to go to an evening jewellery class – grammar school girls just did not do that!

“The teacher there helped me to find my feet and my journey in creativity began, using my hands and designing items.”

Linda's workshop in Stobo (Image: Mark Davey)

This led to a one-year art foundation course at Farnham College and Surrey before attending arts school in Sheffield where its great steel industry was in decline.

Linda met her husband to be, Adrian Hope, also a jeweller, at Sheffield and on graduating they set up their first workshop in the premises of Edinburgh jeweller, Ian Clarkson, in the Grassmarket.

They moved to their own workshop at the bottom of Dundas Street before the big move to Stobo in 1994.

There they revitalised an industrial setting from another era, moving into a cottage next to a former wheelwright, blacksmith and farrier.

The previous workshop owner had run a post office from the premises and the two jewellers had to do some reconstruction.

Linda said: “Our equipment is all very simple, hand tools, gas for soldering, melting and annealing, work benches and vices.”

Linda’s process has now come full circle and the Stobo jewellers run their own courses.

She added: “We have had many students and some know exactly what they are trying to achieve, they can visualise it in their mind before perhaps creating a drawing.”