Diana Porter Jewellery

One of our best selling lines of jewellery is Diana's And On ring, a simple silver band with the motif andonandon etched into the surface and plated with 22ct gold or blackened by oxidisation. The andon theme is used on many of her designs and is also used for her company name, Andon Ltd.

Artists Statement:

I wanted to be an actor.
I trained as a teacher, had two children, was a single parent, did lots of amateur acting, met a long term partner who I still live with, found feminism (dirty word now), worked for twenty odd years as an arts administrator; during which time I did fascinating jobs such as running theatre companies both in London & in Bristol, setting up a small scale theatre and community arts centre in Bristol, running Birmingham Women's Festival.
I campaigned for more money for the arts, for equality of opportunities for women, disabled people and ethnic minorities; I demonstrated against nuclear armaments.

I got grants for people from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Local Authorities
and Regional Arts Boards. I did budgets, wrote reports, filled out a thousand forms...
...And then I went to college to do a 3 year full time degree course in Jewellery and Silversmithing.
I loved the way that working with metal centred and concentrated my mind; I learnt about design and form
and my teachers pushed me to develop my design ideas, which I now thank them for.
I loved the History of Art part of the course and became passionate about investigating the history of the involvement by women in the arts and crafts.
This was 3 years to take stock and to create - it was a gift and the jewellery is an outcome of that.