Gilding the City

In Gilding the City, artist Sayraphim Lothian repurposes broken bits and pieces of jewellery found in the city streets to create jewellery for the city itself.

Inspired by Melbourne jeweller Caz Guirney’s City Rings body of work, Melbourne street artist Daniel Lynch’s Junky Projects and Madga Sayeg’s grafitti knitting, Gilding the City is a refashioning of lost, discarded and broken bits of earrings, necklaces, pendants, rings and other trinkets into new pieces for the city to wear. The items, ranging from the shamanistic and ritualistic to the humerous and cheeky, are love letters from the artist to her city, and from the artist to the people who remember to look around as they walk the streets.

Once created, the pieces are installed around the city, hidden tiny objects which reward those who take the time to stop to smell the roses and notice what the city has to offer.

Gilding the City started as a Melbourne street art project and has quickly spread to the UK and the USA.  With the help of members of the Agency of Coney, a UK based company whose three principals of adventure, loveliness and curiosity helped inspire this project, Gilding pieces are starting to appear on the streets of England, Europe and America.

Gilding Australia:

Melbourne:

Mia Mia:

Gilding England:

Shoreham By Sea:

Birmingham:

London:

Gilding America:

Portland, Oregon:

You can see more of the Gilding the City project at my flickr page here.

For the origins of the project, check out the blog post I wrote about it here or go here to see all the posts about GIlding the City

Spin off projects:

Scottish yarnbomber Shado Stitch did a call out asking for inspirations for their next yarn bombing project. I got in touch and told them about Gilding the City. Check out their awesome yarnbomb/Gild mashup: