Karin Marita Jones received a diploma in Jewellery Art and Design from Vancouver Community College in 1993. Since then she has worked as a goldsmith’s apprentice in Hamburg, Germany, created a successful line of silver and enamel jewellery, exhibited at numerous galleries and fine craft shows throughout North America, and worked as designer and goldsmith for Stittgen Fine Jewelry, West Vancouver. She now lives on Salt Spring Island, a small community off Canada’s West Coast, and has turned her attention away from traditional jewellery, to creating artwork in Damascene, an ages old technique for inlaying silver and gold on steel. She experimented with, and perfected, this process during an artist residency in Fiskars, Finland, in 2007, where she also volunteered at the local forge, to learn traditional blacksmithing techniques.

"I have been fascinated with the combination of silver and gold with steel ever since I saw an exhibition of Japanese sword guards over 10 years ago. I later saw suits of armour inlaid with intricate patterns in a museum in Paris. These works of art seemed to represent a series of exquisite contrasts: hard and soft materials, base and precious metals, and the paradox of such delicate artistry used to decorate instruments of brutality and war.

Once I started working with the technique, I began to see the possibility of taking it beyond jewellery, to bigger objects, and into the realm of fine art. The history and uses of the technique itself create a dramatic tension in the work, imbuing it with a completely different set of references than those implicit in fine jewellery."

- Karin Jones