Fine Lines with Malcolm Appleby

Malcolm Appleby’s Perthshire home grew around his atelier, so this is the first room he finds himself in after he wakes at 6am. “I like to get some work done before my assistant arrives at 8am,” says the revered silversmith and engraver, now 76, who can usually be seen sporting a jumper knitted by his mother that is now a darned kaleidoscope of yarns. On his plot of land in Aultbeag, Grandtully, which had planning permission for “a boring bungalow”, he and his wife Philippa (Swann, a writer and photographer) have built a collage of an Arts & Crafts-style house, with “bits stuck on over the years”. It is surrounded by an acreage, where a woodland garden sprouts oak and hazel saplings and is latticed with great juicy apple trees. “I’m planting lots of trees…” says Malcolm, “which is one of my great pleasures, and it’s as important as the work”.

The work: it’s exquisite, idiosyncratic and delightfully creative, melding silver and gold like fine paintwork, intertwined with more humble metals. Rare and precious stones feature too, and the result is as dainty as a butterfly’s wing. His portfolio includes gossamer-fine brooches with plaid detailing, a silver hawthorn leaf pendant wrapped so delicately around a pale amethyst it looks like it hardly dare touch the precious stone, and slashed beakers of textured metal - gilded, rubbed and engraved to add tone and depth.