Plagiarism

When you were a kid at school, did you ever draw a really fantastic picture, an image that really reflected what you were seeing in your mind, only to look across the room and see that some other less talented kid had looked at yours and copied it exactly but for their lack of artistic skill? The designer of Corky Saint Claire has had that exact experience, although his copycat can't justify her actions through the excuse of childish ignorance. Lauren Ridley, otherwise known as Cherryloco, who can be found on various craft and handmade websites, including the Glasgow Craft Mafia, purports that all 'Cherryloco designs are handcrafted by Lauren from a small makeshift workbench in her flat'. Someone with a BA Honours degree in Jewellery should really know better.

At Corky Saint Claire, every design is carefully perfected and a simple idea becomes something incredibly beautiful and unique. According to Burnished and Buffed, Lauren stated that she found images of Corky Saint Claire designs such as 'Rolly the Radcore Robot (the original pictured first, copy second, images from Burnished and Buffed)' on Google images, so considered them to be in the public domain and free to be used as she wished. What bullshit. 'Scuse my language. She even copied the sales spiels from Corky's website. You can see her version is just a cheap, rough job compared to the lovely, delicate original. It's terrible that someone can make money by stealing the ideas of an innocent, hardworking artist.

Apparently Folksy have taken her stuff off their website. Good! Now we just have to wait for the others to follow. Plagiarism is totally not on, and people need to know that. Glasgow may be far from Melbourne, but that's no excuse.