I came across this beautiful antique Chinese cinnabar cabochon and knew I had to make it into a pendant for my best friend for her birthday.
I even added some detail to the back of the pendant, to match the front.
I came across this beautiful antique Chinese cinnabar cabochon and knew I had to make it into a pendant for my best friend for her birthday.
I even added some detail to the back of the pendant, to match the front.
This domed pendant was a one-off creation for my dear mother-in-law, who is so good to me.
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I wanted it to be an everyday piece that has interest, simplicity and clean lines.
I think it got there!
This piece was a custom order for a lovely client, who happens to be the friend of another lovely client of mine. I was so pleased!
I have only a couple of dark silver and one gold of these titanium coated drusy cabochons left, and I won’t be getting in any more. If you’d like your own piece, get in touch!
I created this ring for a client who lives in Guam.
Simple, timeless and elegant – great choice for a wedding ring!
The lovely Rusty of Vance Custom Guitars had me create a bespoke guitar pick pendant for one of his artists.
The spec was for the pendant to be the same size as an actual guitar pick, and for it to have some “pillow depth” i.e. not to be flat but to have a bit of curve to both sides. The pick has the Vance “V” logo, and the artist’s initials on the reverse. There are actually three layers of metal in this piece. It was fun to build, and both Rusty and Samantha were very complimentary about it!
Have you ever wondered how to keep your Silver Forge pieces at their sparkling best? Well, the first place to start is with a silver polishing cloth. These are available at most jewellers, and provide a soft and gentle way to clean your silver.
What if your piece is quite tarnished? This happens to me quite a lot. (Perhaps it’s a touch of ‘the shoemaker’s children are never shod?’) Here’s what silver repairer and restorer Jeffrey Harman has to say about tarnish:
“Tarnish, in regards to silver, is a thin layer of corrosion that forms from a chemical reaction on the surface of an object. This layer consists mainly of black silver sulfide caused by the silver’s reaction with sulfur-containing compounds such as hydrogen sulfide in the air. Tarnish appears as a yellow, gray, or black film on objects. After tarnish forms, the corrosion process slows as the silver sulfide layer thickens.
Any sulfur-containing compound with the sulfur in a reduced oxidation state (e.g., hydrogen sulfide, sulfur, carbonyl sulfide) will cause silver to tarnish. Moisture also plays a role. The higher the relative humidity, the faster silver tarnishes (if sulfur-containing compounds are present). However, even if there is no moisture in the air but it is contaminated with hydrogen sulfide, the silver will still tarnish because there is a direct reaction (water not involved) between the silver and the hydrogen sulfide. So it is not good enough to remove only the moisture because the silver will still tarnish if there is hydrogen sulfide present (or other tarnishing gases). Clean silver will form tarnish more quickly than will tarnished silver.”
A note to say that humans have sulfur in our bodies, which contributes to our jewellery tarnishing!
If you have a plain silver piece, or some of my Czech glass earrings, you can use the old-fashioned method of lining a bowl with tin-foil, placing the pieces in the bowl and sprinkling some bi-carb soda on them, then covering them with boiling water. This really works – just make sure your pieces are all touching the tin-foil.
WARNING: A very few pairs of the Czech glass beads in my earrings (like the pairs below) do NOT like to be cleaned this way – if you’re in any doubt, email me and I can tell you if it’s safe or not.
Hagerty’s Silver Foam was recommended to me by my goldsmithing teachers, and I use that as my next stop.
Easy to use, it will clean your piece in no time, with a minimum of fuss!
There are other methods employed to clean silver, some of which you can read about on Jeffrey Harman‘s most excellent website, but these three are the ones that I stick with.
A note about gemstones – some gemstones do not take kindly to cleaning methods – check before you clean a gemstone piece. There’s a handy guide to gemstone cleaning from the International Gem Society here.
Lastly, if you have a Silver Forge piece that needs some TLC and you’re not wanting to take on the task, please contact me – I’d be happy to help restore it to its former glory!
My lovely sister had a birthday recently, and I thought she might need a bit of understated bling – so I made her a pair of melanite garnet stud earrings.Love my sister!
To go with the ring from my previous post, my gorgeous client Natasha had me make her a pair of earrings using green gemstones.
The stones are jade and bloodstone (also known as heliotrope.) Fantastic!