Justin Ferguson, Kawakawa - Bay of Plenty
After many years on the move Justin and his family settled in Kawakawa, gateway to the Bay of Islands.
He was raised on a farm near the small country town of Patumahoe before moving to the North Shore of Auckland City at the age of five. He was strongly interested in the arts from a young age and was particularly fascinated by Māori Taonga, greenstone and bone carving and the way they were bound and fastened.
After relocating to the beautiful Golden Bay in his early twenties he began training in many crafts including bone carving with the legendary Chris Bone. After many years of bone and wood carving he transitioned into working with silver but brought with him, his braided cord style that compliments my rough beaten ancient looking silver work.
Justin has been an active and well known jeweller in the high end contemporary craft scene in New Zealand for over a decade. His work is all hand made with very low-tech tools and unlike a lot of "hand made" jewellery his work involves no factory castings.
As his pieces are chunky and roughly forged using hammers he tends toward pure silver with it's easy workability and the fact that it does not tarnish, combined with a surface peening to add a little sparkle to your life.
All the chains, ear hooks and the thinner earrings are Sterling silver for strength. Pure silver, also referred to as fine silver, has an actual silver content of 99.9% whereas sterling silver is an alloy created when copper is added to pure silver in order to make the resulting compound more durable and less soft. Usually, sterling silver has a purity of 92.5%, meaning that 7.5% of the alloy is made of copper or another metal (usually nickel or zinc). Cords are very durable black polyester for long life, which are hand braided.
