‘Metal was my natural metier’: remembering jeweller and design educator Dorothy Hogg (1945-2022)

In a catalogue essay in 2014, Professor Dorothy Hogg MBE wrote of her fascination with 16th- and 17th-century European memento mori jewellery, ‘with its message that life is vulnerable and sometimes short’. Through a lifetime of making, teaching and curating, Dorothy – who died in April following a long illness – reminded us of the deep connection jewellery has to life, leaving us with a rich legacy of work and ideas that reveal the medium’s potential as a unique form of human expression.

Dorothy was born in 1945 in the Scottish coastal town of Troon. Writing in 1994, Crafts' former editor Martina Margetts felt: ‘It is fortunate that Dorothy Hogg was not a rebellious child. She might have refused a career in the same field as her father and grandfather.’ Dorothy remembered being ‘illegal child labour’ in the family’s jewellery shops, ‘dusting shelves, sorting pearls…’

She might not have been rebellious, but Dorothy was independent-minded. When choosing her specialism following two-year design foundation at Glasgow School of Art (where she studied from 1963 to 1967), she chose jewellery – ‘despite the expectation that girls would select embroidery as a craft subject’. She felt, then, that ‘metal was my natural metier.’

In 1967, she won a coveted place at the Royal College of Art in London. Here, her personal voice emerged, with a series of striking angular silver neckpieces combined with lapis lazuli and plique a jour enamel. In later years, she felt these forms reflected the tension of a young artist moving into the competitive London environment.

Silver became her dominant material, influenced by her teachers at Glasgow: leading silversmiths J. Leslie Auld and William Kirk. Following his retirement, Auld gave Dorothy his bench and tools. In 2008, when she became the inaugural maker resident at the V&A’s Sackler education centre, she took his bench to London with her. Kirk later became a colleague at Edinburgh College of Art in the Department of Jewellery and Silversmithing, which she ran from 1985 until 2007.

Her teaching work at Edinburgh was recognised as groundbreaking, earning her an MBE for services to design education in 2001. As the Scottish Gallery’s Christina Jansen remarks: 'Dorothy possessed a particular gift for teaching... understanding the value of teaching hand skills to unlock a student’s potential for personal expression.’ And as Susan Cross, Dorothy’s colleague at Edinburgh, put it: ‘Dorothy leaves so much light and creative spirit in so many people.’

I first met Dorothy in 1986, but our relationship developed while working together on her 1994 solo show at the Scottish Gallery. The exhibition shone a light on her own jewellery design, which had taken something of a back seat over the previous decade due to the demands of running a university department.

The show previewed striking silver brooches and neckpieces on the theme of ‘balance', which encapsulated her ability to create not only beautifully made and formally innovative jewellery, but jewellery that symbolises human experience. In her ellipse-shaped Spirit Level brooches, free-hanging silver wire elements tangle and straighten, suggesting that familiar, human and almost impossible search for balance in life.

Pieces from the Spirit Level series are held by National Museums Scotland, the Goldsmiths’ Company, the Crafts Council Collection and the Fitzwilliam Museum. Today, Aberdeen Art Gallery and the V&A both have important holdings of her work.

Although Dorothy saw herself as ‘psychologically and visually rooted in the culture of Scotland’, her curiosity about the wider world was always apparent. Over the years, she built links throughout the world, curating shows, organising residencies and bringing international artists and curators to Edinburgh.

In the following decade, she continued to create exciting new work – including the Artery series in silver and red felt, launched at the Scottish Gallery in 2004. The forms had become more organic, with explicit connections to the human body, but underpinned with the same exceptional handling of metal.

Following retirement from Edinburgh in 2007, Dorothy continued her busy professional life. She was invited to give a growing number of talks and workshops at museums, enjoying the chance of working with children and families, sowing the seeds for creative lives in new settings. She developed a new body of work exploring the theme of touch, recognising its importance in the digital age.

In 2009 she became a Crafts Council trustee and in 2010 was presented with Lifetime Achievement awards by the Goldsmiths Crafts and Design Council and the Incorporation of Goldsmiths of the City of Edinburgh. She continued to curate, organising a 2009 show at Contemporary Applied Arts in London and two modern jewellery shows we curated together at the Goldsmiths Centre in 2015 and for the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust in 2017.

She was still making in her final weeks – as jewellery curator Dr. Elizabeth Goring says: ‘Dorothy showed a lifetime of commitment to family, students and work that mirrored the meticulous nature of her making. The love, courage, generosity, and concern for others she maintained to the end were truly inspiring.'