Stop-N-Go Men

Here's a fun pair of cuff links I made as a commission. They are the "Ampelmännchen" from German street signs. And they are adorable...

Flight of Fancy

You've seen most of these pics before, but I thought it might be helpful to put them in the correct order and make a little narrative that illustrates my process...

My primary goal for this piece was to capture the fluid movement and glittering color palette of a dragon in flight. I made many sketches and finally settled on a two-piece design whereby the dragon's wing would be separate from the body. This would add both an additional element of motion to the piece, as well as make it comfortable to wear.

The first step in the process is to create the base in which to inlay the cloisonne enamels. I cut out the design from a sheet of 20 gauge fine silver and then fused it to another sheet of 20 gauge fine silver.


Figure 1: Fusing the Fine Silver to create a base

I don't use solder, because the enamels would react to the materials in the solder and the purity of the colors would be lost. This was the largest design in silver that I have ever fused, and it was a little tricky. I heated it from below using a torch until the silver just started to shimmer, then backed off the heat, let it cool, and hammered it flat again. After the base was fused, I again used a saw to cut the design out of the silver base, filed the edges, and shaped it with a soft mallet to be slightly convex in shape.


Figure 2: The finished base and the wires

I use fine silver wire of various gauges (22, 20, 18 gauge) and mill them by hand to create the cloisonné strips. I like to use various thicknesses to add dimension to my designs.



Figure 3: The wires have been fired into place

After applying counter enamel to the reverse of the piece, I sifted some clear enamel and then carefully began the process of laying in the wires. I did this in several stages, starting with the main shapes and then slowly adding the rest of the wires, firing in stages to keep things from shifting.


Next comes the best part of all- adding the colors! By far, this is my favorite step in the whole process. I use leaded enamels, and wash them thoroughly at least 10 times with distilled water. I chose a color palette of greens, blues, and aqua for my dragon. I used a brush to add the grains of enamels in between the wires, and fired in between each coat. After many firings, the enamels were flush to the top of the base and I added a coat of clear enamel for good measure.

Then I ground down the enamels using diamond files and various grits of sandpaper until the piece was completely flush with the base. I added more clear enamels to the areas that weren't quite flush and fired the piece again. I worked my way by hand through the various grits of sandpapers – 220 through 4000, then fired the piece one last time to give the glass a perfect brilliance.



To finish, I fabricated a chain of 18 gauge fine silver links that were shaped like flames to compliment my dragon and add a little whimsy to the final design.

Feeling Gothic

It's spring- the sun is shining and the daffodils are in bloom, but for some reason, I'm loving the gothic right now. Here's a sketch of my new gargoyle necklace. He'll be holding a black drop pearl, and I have some gorgeous blood red ruby beads to string him up with. Very fancy, indeed! Well, I better go start cutting out some silver...

Back from Baltimore...

Wow. As much as I love making enamel jewelry, thinking about enamel jewelry, and talking about enamel jewelry, six days in a row is a lot of talking and thinking (and standing!). But it was such fun! Met loads of interesting people and saw some amazing crafts. Here's a pic of my booth:

I also had a great conversation with fellow enamelist Ricky Frank. He's such a nice guy... He shared a lot of great information for grinding, polishing, and finishing my work. So I'm very excited to get back to my grinding station and start honing my polishing skills.


Also present at the show was limoge artist Karin Pohl. She had the most exquisite miniature portrait of Katherine Parr:


So, all in all, a great show. The surprise hit seller were these little guys. I made little angel/devil cuff-links (and earrings) and they completely sold out. In fact, I took a couple of orders for them and need to make more tomorrow. (so if you want a pair, let me know!)

Busy as a bee!

I'm going to be doing the American Craft Council Show in Baltimore February 22-28. It'll be two days of wholesale and then four days of retail. I'm getting excited! There's so much to get done that I've been working non-stop.

I'm doing a whole series of Gothic pieces in shades of grays and black, and I've been enjoying them immensely. Here are two pendants:



And another charming flower necklace. This one will be in shades of purple:

And more butterflies too!

Pins!

Yes, I'm branching out into the glorious world of pins. It's actually very liberating to be freed from shapes that need to fit themselves into necklaces, bracelets, or earrings. I've made a whole garden of flora and fauna.


I've made a charming lotus flower pin in shades of pink and green. Below, you can see the setting I created echoes the motif:


Here's my bench right now. As you can see, I'm very busy getting ready for my two upcoming shows- The Piedmont Craftsmen show in Winston-Salem (November 20-22) and the Carolina Designer Craftsmen show in Raleigh (November 27-29)

My New Grinder!

I know, it doesn't look like much. I assure you that the grinder you see above is truly a work of art. No more hours and hours of grinding by hand, my fingers bloody and my joints in agony.

My friend Lillian (see her gorgeous work at www.enamellist.com) helped me get it all set up. There's two parts- the arbor in front that you can attach different grinding/sanding/polishing wheels to) and the motor in back. It was a tricky business- the motor is attached to the arbor with a pulley, and we've mounted it on a board with hinges so I can easily change the belt. (thereby changing the speed) The motor itself was a pain because the silly cord came unconnected! We had to wire it up ourselves.

It has a little spigot that drips water on each wheel. Check out my ingenious water delivery method. (okay, so it's a plastic jug and some tubing, but still... the wonders of gravity doing all the work!) All the water (mostly) drains into a bucket on the floor. I've put it in the basement because it is a little messy. And, although my basement looks sort of scary, it's really not. I love our basement!


I cant really hold onto the piece while grinding, so I've attached the piece to be ground onto a paint stick using dopping wax. The dopping wax smells really good when it's melting, so there's another bonus.


Here's me actually using the grinder. Remember that dragon from the last post? I spent two entire days grinding and polishing it by hand. There's definitely a learning curve to using the grinder- you have to be very careful not to use too much pressure and to keep the angle correct, or it quickly turns disastrous. I did pretty good- I ground about 20 pieces and only destroyed one. (sadly, it was a charming bumblebee pendant, but that's the price you pay for learning new things.)