In Living Color

Pools of glass contained in silver.

It may have been a retirement plan, but Lynn Adams is certainly not retired. After living in the UK for 40 years and working in the business sector, she settled in Lyme with her husband in 2002 and started to build her new career as a jeweler. In preparation for the move, she minored in enamel and majored in silversmithing at the prestigious Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media & Design in London.

She was juried into the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen in 2003 and is also now active with artist collectives in Vermont.

Adams uses a technique known as champlevé, meaning “raised fields.” The designs are photo-etched or hand-etched with nitrous oxide, leaving a shallow depression of .3 millimeters. To build layers of glass, she adds enamel grains of varying sizes, firing after each addition. The color combinations are alive and shimmer like liquid pools contained within silver borders – and each is unique.

Adams creates pins, earrings and pendants with a variety of abstract designs inspired by that sense of wonder created by light filtering through the trees in the woods near her small-town home.

The designs are getting simpler. “It’s all about the color,” she confesses. Her work can be found at all League of New Hampshire Craftsmen shops; WRENOvations, Bethlehem; Exeter Fine Crafts; Tates Gallery, New Boston; Sharon Arts Center, Peterborough; and at Long River Studios in Lyme. In February, she will be the featured artist at the League shop in Exeter.

Work shown above is available at Ruth Boland Basketry and League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Shop 98 Main St., Nashua.