Jane Adam was born in London. After a short career in retail management at Heal’s and Liberty’s, she gained a degree in 3D Design at Manchester Polytechnic in 1981 and an MA in Metalwork and Jewellery at the Royal College of Art.
When she graduated in 1985, she set up her studio in central London. Since then, she has concentrated full time on making jewellery, combining artistic integrity, ongoing experimentation and technical innovation with a grounded sense of practical reality, to design and create ranges of jewellery that appeal to women (and men) of all ages. This is shown in leading galleries and exhibitions internationally, and by Jane herself at shows such as Goldsmiths’ Fair. Her innovative work in anodised aluminium has been widely influential, and her jewellery is included in many major museum and public collections.
She was a founder, vice-chair and chairman of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery, and a maker trustee and then co-vice chair of the Crafts Council. She has been involved in many committees, selection and advisory panels for the crafts and jewellery sectors. She has taught and lectured in Portugal, Taiwan, India, China, the USA and in universities throughout the UK, and was Research Fellow at the School of Jewellery in Birmingham from 1997 to 2001. From 2015 to 2019, she served as a trustee of Cockpit Arts, where she had her workshop for many years before moving in 2015 to her own bespoke studio in South-west London.
Jane Adam is a lifelong innovator, a quiet revolutionary who has carried out her pioneering work with intelligence and perseverance through four decades. Her natural language is metal but she is unconstrained by its traditional rules. Apparent limitations are there to be tested, in a spirit of genuine enquiry, and then transcended. ‘I push my materials to their limits to explore their inherent qualities, such as how a metal tears or gains texture under stress, or the way a scratched line changes its physical character when it is stretched or compressed.’ Such free thinking allows unexpected outcomes to be appreciated and exploited for their intrinsic textural or visual beauty.
She treasures ‘the magical moment when the right piece finds the right owner… By becoming part of the wearer’s experience and expression of self, my jewellery is transformed and completed… I know I have succeeded in making something relevant when other people respond by buying and wearing my work’.
"Jane Adam’s jewellery changes people; it changes as it is worn; the maker herself changes over time. Her work shows steady evolution melded with continuity, and a sense of circularity, where everything comes around - but always in an original and excitingly different way".
Dr Elizabeth Goring, 2019
