Rings from recycled gold and silver

I start with the scrap pieces (above).

 Melt them in a crucible.

 Once it melts, it makes a metal plug.

 I hammer the plug out flat.

 Flat plug.

 Cut out the center of ring.

 Refine the shape with a file.

 And here are the finished rings.

New chased copper charms I've been making.  Designs are based on mourning jewelry.  These are not finished yet; I think I may enamel them.  Updates are forthcoming.

In the meantime, the Art of Mourning has great images of mourning jewelry.

More images of my charms for "Charmed III; third time's the charm".  The silver one is being donated to a series of charm bracelets that will be auctioned as a fundraiser for the Pittsburgh Society for Contemporary Craft.

I'm pretty pleased with them--I think they're, ahem, quite charming.

On their way!

This spring I was invited to participate in Pittsburgh's Society for Contemporary Craft's "Charmed III:  third time's the charm" exhibition.  I made the enameled charms you see above.  Each one is approximately 3/4" high.  The charms will be available for sale in the store and on their website beginning February 3rd. 

Boxes

If you teach metals, and you are (like me) a little obsessive about keeping organized teaching samples of all your small metaly stuff, let me recommend these AWESOME photo storage boxes from the Container Store.
Yes, they're pricey, but now the samples for my entire beginning Jewelry/Metals class are organized into this one, portable, box. And I love being organized.

Plus, they're made in the USA.

San Antonio at Christmas

lights on the trees along the Riverwalk in San Antonio.

We went to San Anton last week for the opening of La Noche del Brooche; an invitational exhibition of brooches at Equinox Gallery. N and I both had brooches in it, and you can see all the brooches in the show here.

Back in the saddle...I hope

It would be an understatement to say that I have been struggling to work in the studio after Italy.

First, it was because we moved over the summer, and I have a hard time getting motivated when my life is in upheaval. The other part of my problem is that I don't have a proper work space at the moment; I'm working out of our bedroom, which is not ideal.

But really the problem was not knowing what to make. I'm tired of my old work and really don't want to work with plastic for a while, so I've been searching for a new source of inspiration. The most inspiring thing I've seen this past year was the amulet collection at the National Archeological Museum in Perugia, Italy, which I mentioned on this blog in March.

You'd be hard-pressed to find the jeweler or metalsmith who isn't at least partially interested in amulets, but contemporary versions are often so cliché that I have typically avoided them like the plague.

And I'm still avoiding them. I am not making amulets.

I have finally started a project partially inspired by the sense of fragility and vulnerability of those amulets, however. My goal is to make at least 100 copper quatrefoil charms that will be altered using some simple, straight-forward method. I plan to enamel them and hang them on a handmade safety-pin.

Time will tell if these pins have the feeling I want, but so far, I'm enjoying it and keeping busy. Which is good.

Thought for the day.

"—art is so persistent in all our cultures because it is a means of the culture to survive. And the reason for that, I believe, is that art, at its fullest capacity, makes us attentive.

...I also believe, curiously, that beauty, which is very often something we confuse with art, is merely a mechanism to move us towards attentiveness. You realize we all have a genetic capacity and need to experience beauty, but beauty is not the ultimate justification for art. It is merely the device by which we are led to attentiveness.”

-Milton Glaser