OtherWayUp, or OWU, is the solo agency of myself, D Geoff Kayson. It is an independent space for my creative ideas born out of personal interests, and an outlet for the things I enjoy crafting in my home workshop.

OWU consists of several separate projects, including Lychgate (folklore & superstition), English Craftwork (wood, metal & stone candlelight & artefacts), Cline Artisan Jewelry (woman’s fashion jewellery), and other disparate activities.

As a teenager I began my career as a theatre carpenter – I loved working with wood. As a hobby I was a scale model maker and painter engrossed in history, especially military. Semi-professionally I made and painted miniature model soldiers and dioramas for collectors and museum displays, etc, and then for wargaming groups. This quickly evolved into my small fantasy modelling/gaming business, though with limited and fluctuating success.

Down on my luck at this time, around the 1970’s, I was also a punk, and being, apparently, unemployable, on the dole and living alone in a bedsit, I searched my imagination for something I could make out of nothing, and sell.

I came up with ‘Poker’, solid lead, punk anti-jewellery, as a contemptuous reaction to the gold ingot-wearing, disco-poncy rich kids seen posing around the town’s fashionable areas.

I made badges from scrap lead depicting toilet seats, broken bottles, dustbin lids, ‘SPIT’ and other disrespectful tokens, fastened onto my denim or leather jacket with safety pins.

I sold these in local pubs and punk gigs, and then through my hand drawn classified ads in Sounds and NME music papers, and to my astonishment and excitement they were successful! I added to these some bootleg Motorhead and Whitenake, etc, pins and sold them to a local character with a football merchandise shop, who went on to then distribute them to other outlets.

This was now 1977, and the beginnings of what eventually became Alchemy. We learned skills and very soon developed quality, pewter jewellery for the rock, biker, fantasy and goth scenes, and then quickly became official band merch producers for many of my favourite rock bands.

In 2027 Alchemy England, a.k.a. Alchemy Gothic, will be celebrating its 50th Anniversary, and while I remain a working director there, I am semi-retired, living in Shropshire and spend my time having fun in my home workshop and following my own personal interests with OtherWayUp!