Ashleigh Kennedy meets her gems in the raw – drawing them from the earth before carefully cutting, polishing and designing her one-of-a-kind jewellery pieces for her brand, The Fossick. It takes time, dedication, and a passion for the craft – something Ashleigh has in spades.
People send Ashleigh Kennedy rocks in the mail. The delicate, Botticelli beauty smiles enigmatically, “A fossicker from Victoria sent me some peridot recently. People know it’s my thing,” she says. “Or they will send me stones they’ve found themselves for me to craft into jewellery.” Ashleigh was the kid who would sell rocks she found outside her house. “A nice lady who lived down the street would buy them from me sometimes.” As a jeweller and lapidary, that is, someone who cuts and polishes rocks, Ashleigh conceived The Fossick Jewellery brand when she moved from Brisbane to Sicily in 2014. An 1850s gold rush word, a fossick is someone who turned over old gold diggings, but now refers to anyone who goes in search of both gemstones and gold, or even seashells on a beach. In Ashleigh’s own words, “you can fossick literally anywhere – there are minerals under our feet wherever we go, in towns, backyards, manmade waterways and out bush”.
Ashleigh has now settled on the coastal side of Ballina. She works full-time on her business but unlike most jewellers, she spends weeks a year fossicking her own local stones. “I was so excited to return to Australia to work with stunning Australian gems again in all their rich colours,” she says. “The volcanic stones I learnt to cut, shape and polish in Italy were all beautiful black obsidian and creamy marble – they are still close to my heart, as is Sicily.” She continues, “These last two years back in Australia, I have been cutting and polishing some beautiful Queensland boulder opal from Yowah. Opal is challenging to work with and this difficulty is something I enjoy. It has such an array of colours and patterns in pastel tones that I love, especially for engagement rings.”
Searching for treasure
The Fossick Jewellery is now stocked in a range of high-end boutiques in resorts such as Voyages Ayers Rock Resort, Yulara in Uluru and in regional art galleries in the New England (NERAM), Maitland, Hervey Bay and the Lennox Arts Collective.
What makes Ashleigh’s work so special is her passion for finding the perfect stone in the wild. “The possibility of finding one just a little bigger, a little clearer, a little more colourful is exciting. It’s a balance of luck, patience, research and skill,” she says about her fossicking adventures. Last year, she went on an 11-day solo trip in April to Torrington, near Tenterfield, NSW. “I was on the hunt for emeralds and topaz and despite the drive to go deeper and deeper into the bush, I made sure I didn’t fossick too far from the track. You don’t want to get lost in the bush.” Ashleigh usually goes with her partner Josh, who also films and edits their popular ‘Fossicking Adventures’ YouTube videos as they slosh through creeks in the stunning wilderness. “It is so empowering to go on a solo trip into the wilderness and come out with treasure,” she adds with a smile.
Ashleigh and Josh look forward to undertaking a major fossicking trip two or three times a year to a new location. They prefer heading out west to the Granite Belt in the New England region, where volcanic activity makes for a great variety of stones waiting to be found. “Before we even pack our fossicking tools – picks, shovels and sieves – we do lots of different research. It’s a combination of searching online forums and fossicking groups, referring to old fossicking books and geological maps and sometimes friends give us hints before trying a new spot. When you don’t know your way around a new site, it can be unfruitful, so we still make day trips to our local Agate fossicking creeks a little further north in the hinterland where the creeks are full of basalt boulders. We almost always find something to bring home.” Ashleigh is also studying the art of faceting to build on her skill set as a gem cutter. While many gems are sent overseas to be cut, Ashleigh believes it’s still so important to make work by hand as an individual, even if it is time consuming and requires a great deal of skill.
From stage props to silver and stone
Ever since she was a child, Ashleigh had a sense of knowing that she would be an artist. She fulfilled her destiny by studying Photographic Art at the Queensland College of Art in Brisbane and at NIDA in Sydney where she learnt prop making for film and theatre. Her bold, silver-set jewellery has the sturdy resilience of items crafted for actors’ hands.
“I had two inspirational teachers and mentors – prop maker Todd Arthur and trained industrial designer and jeweller Marcelo Zavala-Baeza, who is still the head of props at NIDA,” she says. “At NIDA we learnt how to work with every material, except rock. It is heavy and takes a long time to work, and I said to myself, ‘I want to know how to do that!’”
Ashleigh even makes her own tools in order to master the material. She recently made a silversmithing tool to help push the silver over the stone when setting it in a finished piece of jewellery. She plans to start teaching silversmithing and stone-setting workshops to share her love of stones at the workbench on an even deeper level with her customers.
When in Sicily
During her nine years in Italy, Ashleigh lived the artist’s dream, spending her days in the mountains near a local marble quarry behind Scopello, a rough-hewn Mediterranean tuna fishing town in Sicily, population 100, swelling to 2000 in summer.
“While there, I would work on the jewellery for four to five hours in the morning, sleep in the middle of day, then go to sell at the art markets for five hours in the evening. I was there every single day for eight months a year, seven days a week. It was so crazy busy in summer with all the tourists who came to see the ancient Tonnara di Scopello, Lo Zingaro Natural Reserve, the Torre di Scopello, and the town itself is an ancient historical icon which made it popular for weddings. But it would die right down in winter when the tourists left.”
Ashleigh enjoyed the Italian markets so much that she continues to get to know her customers in relaxed market settings in Mullumbimby, The Channon and Bangalow’s monthly markets. She finds the few markets she has done in Australia different in every possible way to the markets in Italy. “In contrast, it is very interesting getting to know these more laidback communities from Kyogle to Yamba. Coming from Brisbane, I’ve never lived in the Northern Rivers and so appreciate their diversity. But ultimately, I’m an artist not a salesperson and I won’t try and make you want my work if you don’t connect with it.”
Staying true to the unique nature of each stone she shapes, Ashleigh intends to continue to develop artistic collections inspired creatively by the features of different stones. Her recent Reef collection reveals a delicate coral-like texture in the silver work to complement the reef scenes she sees in these stones.
Apart from designing jewellery fit for bush queens and their city cousins, she also plans to extend her own fossicking trips to Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and to the fabled town of Coober Pedy in South Australia for the renowned white opals.
But what will she do the rest of today?
Ashleigh answers with a happy shrug, “polish rocks!”
Website | Instagram | Stockists
