I finally finished making a pendant from the last piece of cuttlefish casting I had from our casting workshop earlier this year.
It’s a bit of a departure from my usual style, but the casting just seemed to need some softness with it!
My teacher gave me a couple of suggestions for how to finish it off – thanks Sue! I love the nature of silversmithing, there’s always some new way to look at things and something new to be learned!!
I came across the most divine pieces pictured in ‘Jewelry Concepts and Technology’ by Oppi Untracht, a fantastic book that I bought recently. I was inspired to research John Paul Miller, the artist who created them.
Miller was born in 1918, and started his career as a painter. Inspired by the creations of a fellow student, he started making silver jewellery of his own. After receiving advice from the director of his school that “we don’t need any more good watercolor painters. Why don’t you concentrate on jewelry?” he turned his full attention to the craft.
Miller rediscovered the lost Roman art of granulation. He immersed himself in enamelling. I love his work, it is so intricate and organic. I can only dream of aspiring to be one hundredth as good as this!!
From the interviews I have read, he seems, at 94, to be a humble and gentle man, who has lived an interesting life – well worth reading more about. Thank you, John Paul Miller, for providing such beautiful, inspirational works to the world!
The brief for our seventh project for the course I’m doing this year was to create a piece using chenier hinge as a feature rather than a function. (Chenier is hollow tubing, in case you weren’t sure!)
I designed this pendant so that it could be worn both horizontally and vertically. The six plates rotate around a centre rod. There were a few challenging moments to my usual sadly limited patience during the construction of this piece. Titanium is an interesting but hard metal to work with.. physically hard rather than mentally! It’s a dull grey colour, and very hard to cut, file and especially drill. The gorgeous colour is achieved by heating very carefully, so it has to be riveted on rather than soldered. I added the titanium mainly because I fell in love with the blue quartz bullet stones!!
Once in a while, my fellow students and I agree, you make something that has many challenging stages in it, and many learning experiences. By the end of the process you are pretty over it – so you pop the piece away for a while, and when eventually you bring it out once more, it usually is much more pleasing than you remember! This is one of these pieces! 🙂
I made this ring for Gracie, my son’s girlfriend, to wear to her Year 12 Formal. She is such a sweetheart, she deserves a whole handful of beautiful rings! This one will have to suffice for now.
She chose the stone, and I set it very simply (as always!) and gave it a high polish.
Thanks for the honour, dear Gracie, and have a fantastic night!! 🙂 xx
I made this drusy agate ring for Leesa. I took it down to her yesterday evening, and she was really thrilled!
Everyone who saw this stone before I set it coveted it, so definitely a good choice, Leesa!
It’s so lovely when the person for whom you’ve created a piece loves the work you’ve done. Leesa is keen to have another one, this time in gold, so stay tuned!! 🙂