Two artists who use architecture as their inspiration show their work together for the first time at the Ashmolean Museum in the city of dreaming spires. One creates perfection; the other depicts the chaos of life.

Growing up in Oxford and now living in London, silversmith Vicki Ambery-Smith uses the sculptural forms of architecture and engineering in her beautiful silver and gold jewellery and tableware designs inspired by buildings from all around the world from Rome to Sydney to London and by buildings of all ages from the Pantheon in Rome to the Shard in London and, looking to the future, even the Garden Bridge which is still to be built across the River Thames in London.  

Ceramist Hugh Colvin, the son of the Oxford architectural historian Howard Colvin, makes architectural models, several of which are in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, often focussing on the imaginary and the unbuilt and on the chaotic mess that results from human habitation and uncontrolled events such as earthquakes.   

This small exhibition shows the contrast of their approach linked to the materials they use.  Vicki Ambery-Smith takes precious metals to celebrate many of Oxford’s unique buildings including the Radcliffe Camera, the Divinity School at the Bodlian Library, Keble College, St John’s College and Magdalen College Tower and a piece celebrating the 350th anniversary of the construction of the Sheldonian Theatre with a roof that can be lifted off to reveal the seating plan etched into the base, while Hugh Colvin’s ceramics include the Boycott Pavilion in Stowe designed by James Gibbs around 1728 and a obelisk designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, but never executed, while his larger pieces are more down to earth, showing the aftermath of an earthquake and the reality of people living in buildings with their washing hanging across the facades and bins overflowing with rubbish, for which clay is an excellent base.  

Particularly imaginative is the Radcliffe Camera where Vicki models both the outside architecture and the interior structure with a cut-away section.