Third-year ECA Jewellery and Silversmithing student Holly Munro was selected to design a unique pair of glasses inspired by the city of Edinburgh for spectacle brand, Cubitts. Her winning frame design, inspired by a stormy day in Edinburgh’s National Museum of Scotland, is now on sale in Cubitts’ Edinburgh Old Town store.
The design was the result of a collaboration between ECA’s Jewellery and Silversmithing department and Cubitts to celebrate the opening of the brand’s two new Edinburgh stores. Holly’s design, the Chalmers, was selected by Cubitts to go forward to production and sale.
The project was supported by ECA’s Jennifer Gray, Programme Director for Jewellery and Silversmithing. All students in Year 3 of the programme developed and pitched designs to the Cubitts team.
Inspiration for the Chalmers
Holly’s design was inspired by gazing at passing clouds through the National Museum of Scotland’s Grand Gallery’s birdcage roof construction on a stormy day in Edinburgh.
Holly described her inspiration: “I visited the National Museum of Scotland, as the brief asked for our designs to be inspired by Edinburgh. The day I visited was abnormally stormy for Edinburgh and there was dramatic lighting across the city with golden reflections painted on buildings, stark against the grey horizon.
“The clouds were moving quickly across the surface of the glass roof of the museum. I recorded and followed their movement amongst the geometric shapes within the glass roof. I tend to be drawn to organic shapes found within nature and I was fascinated by these cloud formations in contrast with the mathematical components of the roof.”
Holly continued: “My design process is very fluid - I am constantly evolving and finding new methods of design research and development that work for me.”
