Looking through my photos on Flickr, I realised that I made quite a lot of things towards the end of last year that I didn’t show you! These pieces were all made on a silver jewellery course at Maiden Erlegh School, with tutor Cathy Newell Price.
The piece above is an adjustable ring featuring two smoky quartz cabochons. The top one’s faceted and the bottom one’s smooth. The band is slightly hammered to give it a bit of texture. I bought the fancy bezel strip, I didn’t make all those teeny-tiny prongs from scratch!
This was an experiment with reticulating the surface of sterling silver to create a textured effect. You have to heat and re-heat the silver enough times so that the silver and copper begin to separate, with the silver molecules coming to the surface. Once that’s happened, you can use the blowtorch to create ripples – you just need to be very careful not to melt everything!
Which, as it turns out, is what happened here. I got a bit carried away with the blowtorch on one of these little pieces, and melted one end. Because I wanted the two pieces to match, I then had to very carefully and deliberately melt the other one until they were sort of similar. I don’t mind that they’re not exactly the same – I quite like having fraternal rather than identical earrings. Shows they’re made by hand.
I’d originally intended to make a pair of cufflinks, using the larger pieces of reticulated silver for the front, and the smaller pieces for the back. Unfortunately I very quickly ran out of patience while trying to make a chain to join the large and small pieces together. All those tiny little links were so fiddly! So I decided to quit while I was ahead, and ended up with two lovely pairs of earrings instead.
This was actually the first piece I finished, a labradorite ring. It’s ever so slightly too big for me, but I couldn’t bear to part with it. I wear it with a plain ring over the top to hold it in place, and the large stones prevents it from spinning around on my finger.
The course finished in December, and I promised myself that I’d do more work with silver back in the Shed. I have all the tools, and lots more stones to set… I just haven’t got around to actually buying any more silver. I’d love to make a pendant to match the labradorite necklace though. Kernowcraft have just got in a beautiful teardrop-shaped cabochon that would complement it perfectly!