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Last week a host of media representatives was invited to attend a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Carrol Boyes company, an event at which founder, designer, and doyen Carrol Boyes shared with us the history of her evolvement as an artist, into building a functional art design company, creating a new homeward and lifestyle design every week.<\/p>\n
We were shown the very first art work which sculpture art student Carrol Boyes had created 32 years ago, always with a functional purpose to her art, a skittle. When she started creating works to sell after completing her studies, she switched this around, creating functional items which were also pieces of art. Her first creations were jewelry, making them from clay. Her first commercial piece was made in copper, putting it in her pool to create a patina on it. She talked about making jewelry from cuttlefish, with the melted jewelry from her mother, grandmother, her own jewelry, and ex-partners\u2019 gifts, the latter creating a giggle amongst those present, not being able to find other metal to melt over the Christmas period. Over time she progressed to pewter for her jewelry design, and then to silver. She sold her first creations at a stand on weekends, at Greenmarket Square. <\/p>\n
Her next creative direction was creating cutlery, and we were shown her early pieces. She used pewter initially, but it was expensive and heavy. So she added stainless steel, progressing to using stainless steel only, and moved to stainless steel forged cutlery, sculptures, but dishwasher safe. <\/p>\n
She progressed to cast aluminium next, for the bigger pieces, not being as expensive and heavy as stainless steel. Her first aluminium piece was \u2018Woman in Tub\u2019. <\/p>\n
Over time Carrol designed items that linked to each other. For example, a bottle opener led to the development of a Carrol Boyes Collection of wines made in conjunction with her brother John Boyes and Neels Barnardt. I tasted the wines for the first time when the company launched its new chocolate truffle range last year.<\/p>\n