Nina Bulley
by Angie Boyer
Ever wondered what it would feel like to walk away from a high powered job, the salary, the perks, the whole way of life? Just simply chuck it in and start again. Nina Bulley did exactly that a few years ago after having carved out a hugely successful career for herself with one of the major high street banks. When we presented her with the Newcomer Award at bctf this year, we had no idea of the story she would tell next time we met her, barely two weeks after the show. On a bright Friday morning, Paul and I took the ferry from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight where Nina lives, to hear her tale of two entirely different lives. Nina is obviously committed to the creative work that is her life now, so I wondered how it was that she originally took up a career in something so totally different, with a bank.
"To be honest, I didn't exactly have a big plan in my life. I had always enjoyed making things but didn't really have the opportunity to take my creative interests further when I was young, so I decided on a typing course. After that I went to live in Brighton, all on a bit of a whim really, it was a fantastic time to be young and jobs were relatively easy to come by. I interviewed with Lloyds Bank and when I was offered the job, I thought to myself, 'This'll do for a couple of weeks until I get something else.' Eleven years later I was still there!" Promoted many times, Nina eventually progressed to become an Assistant Manager working on the computer systems for the bank, and had thought that getting into Management was what she had wanted in a career.
"I achieved my aim, got a massive pay rise.... and two weeks into the job I realised that I truly hated what I was doing! I was rushing around, in meetings all day, sitting in air conditioned offices, thinking to myself 'What am I doing here, what's it all about? Let me out!' I simply couldn't see the point of what I was doing, after all what's the point of having a huge salary if you really hate your job, how does the money make it any better? It's good if you can earn money when you're young to get a good start in life, but then what?"
So, one sunny day, Nina just decided to walk away from it all. Convinced that she was completely mad, people asked what she would do. "Make things," was her simple reply. The Bank offered her more money, but came to realise that she was entirely sincere in her desire to change her life, so they reluctantly accepted her resignation.
"The feeling when I handed in my notice was absolutely brilliant. My life at the bank had been crazy, I was on call 24 hours a day to deal with their computer systems if they went down. I had a mobile phone before they became commonplace, a pager before anyone else, a lap top so that I could work anywhere, anytime. When it all went, it was as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders."
The notion of having no job, no income, no routine, would probably be of huge concern to many people, to Nina it was just a great relief. As we sat and talked in her workspace in her house, I realised that she doesn't tend to do things by halves, so her departure from the bank was only really the first step towards a totally different way of life for her. The next move was to sell her one bedroomed flat in Hove and move to a four bedroomed detached house on the Isle of Wight. She had sufficient foresight to secure her mortgage before leaving the bank, although she readily admits to not really having a clue how she would pay it!
"I moved house at just the right time from a property price point of view and I was confident that something would work out for me. I had always been the artistic one in the office, posters and Christmas decorations were always delegated to me to sort out. As a child I was always making things, wooden toys and dolls clothes. It was only when I was older that I realised that not many six year olds can sew poppers on to their dolls clothes like I did. Then, when I lived in Hove, it was the time when stencilling was very popular, so I was often working on friends houses for them in my spare time. I knew that I could find a future making things and being creative."
So Nina found herself away from the rat race, on the Isle of Wight, with no money but no going to work and not a care about it at all. "I could make anything out of anything, so I " she recalled. "Everything in my house is home made (she told us that she had put a new bathroom suite and central heating into her current house herself). If I got an idea for something, I'd go home and make it." Her first craft events on the island saw her selling mirrors, mosaics, stencilled firescreens, frames, bird boxes, egg boxes... the list seemed endless and during the tourist season she was busy at fairs almost every other week.
"By this time, lots of people were buying from me direct, it's one of the advantages of living in a small community, people get to know what you do and call on you if they want something special. Busy as I was, I can't really say that I made much money, though. In fact I had to take lodgers in for a while, which I didn't like at all." It became clear to Nina that to be successful and make a living she needed to specialise, rather than trying to make such a wide variety of things. "I met a chap at one of the Craft Fairs who made stained glass and commented that he could do enough business at one good show to make him money for the whole year. That appealed to me and I ended up at the library doing some research into working with glass."
Purely by chance, she met a woman who wanted some old stained glass windows repaired and, although Nina protested that she wasn't skilled enough to handle the work, the woman insisted and "the challenge had been laid down!". Again, trips to the library helped Nina with the technical know how and, investing her last few pounds in suitable tools, she set to work on the pieces. "The lady almost cried when I took the windows back to her," Nina told us. "She was so overwhelmed by the transformation and the work I had done. She paid me very well, too, which was useful!"
This single episode gave Nina the confidence to specialise in her chosen craft and she made up some sample stained glass panels to display and take orders from at craft fairs. The first event cost Nina just £5 for the table, so she was more than delighted when she took £1,000 worth of orders, confirmation if ever she needed it that she had made the right decision. More poring over books in the library helped her develop her skills and the purchase of second hand pattern books at every opportunity gave Nina the basics of traditional designs to show her customers as a starting point when discussing ideas.
We looked through Nina's folio of stained glass work as we chatted, all of it visually striking and beautifully designed. "I always knew that I had a natural talent for putting colours together, she said. "I do believe that it was the designs which sold my windows, not necessarily my skill in making them. I had an eye for what would look good in people's houses and knew how to advise them on it."
Working in stained glass to earn a living was very different from life at the bank in every respect, although Nina's experience there is beneficial in helping her run her business professionally. Knowledge of customer service and being comfortable with dealing with people at all levels is important whatever your occupation and understanding computers has helped in the administration and promotion of her business. Attending trade shows as a buyer for the bank gave Nina an insight into an aspect of marketing which would be useful to her at bctf.
"I eventually became more confident about pricing my work and after 2 years I had a lot of work on, but the profit could have been better. The materials I used were expensive and it was heavy work, standing all day was physically demanding." Finally, after making a number of superb stained glass door panels for a customer, Nina reached the point where she began to question how much further she could go with the work she was creating. She took time out on a short course at West Dean College near Chichester and it was there that she began to find some answers.
"I went there purely to do stained glass, but when I discovered that they had a kiln I was hooked. I was absolutely fascinated by it and what it could do, I wanted to find out more." Never one to waste time, Nina advertised in the local paper for a second hand kiln when she got back home. "I was surprised to get five replies and ended up buying a 20 year old kiln for just £50," she laughed. "I had massive tubs full of glass off cuts from my stained glass work and never really knew what to do with it all. So I started melting pieces in the kiln, experimenting and playing around with ideas to see what evolved." Although she now has a new, efficient and compact kiln, Nina still enjoys discovering the unexpected when firing glass. "You cannot control the results you get from a kiln, you can have no idea what will come out each time you open the door, it's quite exciting and probably why I haven't got bored with it all!"
Nina claims to have read just about every book there is on glass and I have no reason to doubt her, she is totally absorbed by the subject and particularly with colour. With an idea of creating 'mini stained glass windows' as jewellery and using her previous large scale work to inspire the new pieces, she started making pendants and earrings. She had the idea in her head of what she wanted to achieve, but didn't quite know how to do it, "Books gave details of techniques, but not information about achieving different colours." She bought many different types of glass to experiment with, often working through until the early hours of the morning, coaxing the old kiln into working for her. "It took hours to fire up and had no temperature control, I had to open the door and sneak a look inside to check what was going on!" she told us. "It was a difficult time for me, at 2 in the morning, I'd be thinking that I couldn't do any of it any more, that I would give up, but then the next morning I would resolve to carry on," a familiar story for many creative people. "I persisted with my trials, sometimes trying to incorporate gold leaf, only to find that it would keep burning out. I really was determined to get there, but wasn't impressed with the jewellery I was producing."
The public thought differently, though. Nina was still marketing her stained glass at this time and put some of her jewellery alongside it at one of the craft fairs she was doing. "I have to admit that I thought it was really bad, but I needed to see the reaction to it. People thought it was totally different and it did sell, so I was encouraged to carry on and develop my ideas, luckily my stained glass work financed my experimentation."
Then Nina heard about a different type of glass that would totally change her work. "Well, I read about it in a book!" Dichroic glass is expensive and difficult to obtain in the UK, but with the internet providing a convenient and wide reaching alternative research resource to the familiar library, she was able to trace an American supplier. Nina bought the glass as chips and scrap when she first started using it, but now she orders beautiful sheets, glistening with iridescent changing colours. In the manufacturing process, clear glass is coated with layers of metal oxides to create a reflected light effect with quite unusual colours. The metals used and the number of layers in the coating determine the colour of the dichroic finish, resulting in a stunning visual effect.
"I believe dichroic glass was originally invented for NASA to use in the space industry, in particular for optical filters," Nina explained to us. "Some years ago it was given to stained glass artists to see what they could do with it from an artistic point of view. Unlike
plain glass which only transmits light, dichroic glass had the added quality of reflecting light as well. When my first order arrived, I worked on some sample pieces and put them in the kiln to fire. When I opened it up and peeked in to see what was happening, I realised that at long last I'd cracked it, I had managed to achieve what I had seen in my mind's eye months before."
This revelation meant that she could finally concentrate on developing her jewellery. "I spent a whole year perfecting my work, "she told us. "When the time was right, I took some samples to Quay Arts Centre on the island and was immediately invited to do a Christmas jewellery exhibition there, they loved my work so much." The exhibition preview was a first for Nina and a huge success, her work sold brilliantly.
"That was really where it all took off for me and it has continued to develop ever " Nina now has her work permanently displayed at Quay Arts Centre and also in Brighton and Chichester, at The Old Bakehouse Gallery. "When I first visited The Old Bakehouse Gallery, the owner told me that my work was the best glass jewellery she had ever seen and wanted to take everything I had there and then! She now tells me that they sell something of mine nearly every day they are open, which is just wonderful."
This approval of her work gave Nina the confidence to stop the stained glass work completely and to work entirely on making jewellery. "I consider myself to be a glass maker rather than a jeweller. Being more focused and specialising in just one medium, I started to make a decent living and people began to contact me for orders. I had to work on getting my pricing right for a while, but I've tested it out and think I've got it right now."
The buyers at bctf this year must have agreed with her, because Nina's work was much admired and in demand. Not only did she win our Newcomer Award at the show, she also took orders well beyond her target. "I went to bctf aiming to cover my costs, but I did three times that! The orders were from galleries all over the country, and I think I've managed to get the balance about right between handling these new orders and coping with orders I get in from existing customers.
When judging for our Newcomer Award we consider not only product, skill of making, originality of ideas and design, but also the maker's business skills and approach to marketing their work. Having selected Nina as our winner this year, I was curious about why she had selected bctf. "I supply a local contemporary jewellery shop on the island, 'Theodosia', and the owner suggested that I might try a trade fair as there was a lot of interest from his customers. He thought I might do well at one of the trade shows he visited regularly and I chose bctf as it had a Newcomers Gallery. I thought it would be a good place to start and, of course it specialised in British Craft."
Nina is totally focused on her business, one of the attributes which won her the Newcomer Award. "It's important to always be thinking about the next step and I listen to what my customers tell me. People have been asking for bracelets and rings, which had prompted me to look at mounting some of the glass into silver. I'm working on new designs for the galleries and for bctf in the future, a second range with a different price structure to complement the first."
She showed me some of her most recent work, where she had used fused glass and silver together and I asked who the silversmith was. I should have known, Nina does everything herself and I wondered how she had picked up yet another skill, "I read about it in a book!" Silly question! She dabbled with silversmithing for fun to begin with, to learn the techniques and to make some of the fittings for her glass jewellery. A short weekend course at West Dean was the next step, to learn the tips that she couldn't quite pick up from a book. "It's a great place to stay, lovely surroundings and small classes, so the tuition is good. I always take an advanced class, even if I am just beginning to learn the craft," she explained. "I find that beginners courses are just not fast enough for me, I have usually covered most of the basics at home beforehand. At the advanced level, I can go with a project in mind, the seeds already sown, and spend the course learning more about equipment." West Dean had a whole jewellery workshop set up and Nina obviously revelled in selecting the tools she needed for the project she was working on. "I will probably do another silversmithing course this year, to pick up more tips and improve my technique to speed up the work. Now that I have established this first range of jewellery, discovered which colours and shapes are most popular, I don't need to develop that aspect any further and have more time to work on other things. I have masses of ideas now and there really doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day or days in the week, I have so many ideas to work on."
Nina has had no formal training in the craft which won her our Newcomer Award. I think it's fair to say that she's had no formal training for any of the things that she has turned her hand to over the years, her strong determination and a will to succeed have kept her moving forward. I asked her what she felt she had learnt from the whole experience of changing her way of life completely to pursue a life as a maker. "Whatever you are doing, don't be frightened if things go wrong, don't let it put you off. You may experience lots of failures, but persevere, carry on and find the thing that you really want to do. My determination for making jewellery was so strong, massive. I don't know where it all came from."
Maybe not, but I have no doubt where it is all going!
Nina Bulley
www.fused-glass.co.uk
