Arts and Entertainment

Goldsmith Sarah Peacock brings her shine to Dragonfly Arts on Broadway

October 16, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

With 30 years in the jewellery business, Sarah Peacock has settled in as an Orangeville-based artist and goldsmith. She has taken on a new studio at Dragonfly Arts on Broadway.

“I have been exhibiting in Toronto and Elora for some time,” she began, explaining her history in an interview with the Citizen. Peacock added that she has built a house on her parents’ horse farm, where she lives and creates special cat designs, among other pieces.

“I could get a job in my skill range in Toronto, but I don’t want to live there,” she said. “I make pieces in gold, silver, and platinum. The main thing in promoting pieces I could not exhibit in galleries during COVID was I worked during that time on social media.”

She had been in the jewellery industry for over 20 years, built up other businesses for decades, and now wanted to promote her own work.

“Social media doesn’t do it anymore,” Peacock told the Citizen.

Her answer to the problem? She started putting her work in Dragonfly Arts, saying, “Joan [Hope, owner of Dragonfly] has been trying to get me to have a studio there, and I decided she was right. She is such a good supporter of artists – she’s really helpful.”

Peacock added that she uses a combination of precious materials.

A review of her background showed how she became involved in the jewellery business unintentionally. It began at age 16, when she was studying with an artist.

She had so many questions that he finally told her, “So, you need a part time job…” His friend was a jeweller who taught at Georgian College.

“Stop bugging me and join the program,” he suggested.

Her studies led her to teach: “I taught fabric drawing, jewellery, gemology at Georgian College; did some more courses and went back to teach again at Georgian.”

Peacock worked for a manufacturing company, where she was exposed to the high-end and the bottom of the production side.

She worked on the bench for other jewellers, and then she decided to branch out and do her “own thing.”

“For all of the pieces I design, I make small paintings,” she explained. “The little paintings were there one day at Dragonfly. A couple saw them and wanted me to make something for them.”

Her time at her home studio is spent making specific orders, but when she is working at Dragonfly, she can draw them, noting, “It gives me a quiet space to do that.”

Peacock fuses a combination of traditional and modern technology, in the clear understanding that technology is here to stay, whether or not it is appreciated.

Describing herself, she commented, “I really like the country and I love the horses – but I also like to go to the city and go to the opera.

Her fiancé is a tech director of large digital media games and experiences, and she said, “I also read a lot of sci-fi – this is where we’re headed.”

A pause for a summation in brief: “I just have enthusiasm for so many things.”

There followed a conversation about art and technology as she sees them.

As an artist she explained that technology sets her apart to design visualization. She is a designer who initially creates herdesigns in 3D by hand carving sculpture on computer artistry and manufactures those pieces.”

“I really don’t like to distinguish between artists and craft people,” she remarked. “The way you do work with your hands. There is a difference between a bench artist and working for other people has made me a better designer and better artist.”

What she called the dirty work of mixing and moulding, she noted that her hands were on all of the pieces from start to finish. A customer comes into a shop to pick up a finished piece, and they would thank the shop owner for the value and beauty of the article.

“… but I was the only one to have actually touched it,” Peacock said.

There is software to manipulate objects like a pen or a knife that designs with a palette to make 3D form pressure.

She remembered seeing an artist’s vision of a moulding in wax redesigned by a degenerate computer.

“In this industry, to have have one piece of a design is no longer affordable – the combination of artistry and technology makes things different. It’s important that people respect that technology is part of that now,” Peacock clarified.

At the same time, Peacock’s opinion is that artifical intelligence has not gained the skill to compete with this industry.

Ironically, the intensity of technology’s use and the subsequent rejection of many shoppers who still long for hands-on art “might put us into a art show and buying directly from the artist doing it.”

Sarah Peacock reckons, regardless of how and who, we are going to have art, and technology will spur a new category of art, made by people in front of other people.

“It might actually bring people together,” she said.

She sees herself as “a tolerant humanist who believes people to be radically empathetic with other people; I just don’t believe there [are] any bad people.”

She proposes that people need to be more community-minded.

Her advice to a young person wanting to be in the business of making art in precious metal is to first work for someone in the business for a limited time to understand “the nuts and bolts.”

Next, pursue formal education. There are excellent courses at Georgian College – two-year programs.

She admitted, “The hardest thing is to put yourself out there in all the noise, all the cacophony.”

Yet, Sarah Peacock nevertheless extolls the budding artist to “go out and work for yourself because if you like it, other people will love it.”

Currently, you can find Sarah Peacock at Dragonfly on Tuesday and on Saturday by appointment.

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