Saturday, August 7, 2010

The Golden Smith

This is a Jeweller/craftsman whom I find very inspiring, his name is David Neale and he has a blog called the Golden Smith. He is often blogging about anything of interest as well as his latest projects that he is working on, I love the way he write's, I find him very amusing and witty and often find myself chuckling at a few of his comments.

I can really relate to David Neale as a jeweller as he uses a very similar approach to making jewellery as I do even though our jewellery is quite different.

Like me, David also creates jewellery with a very handmade feel and he takes quite an intentionally careless approach when he make's
his jewellery; and as I do, he has also made many of his own tools.



Much of his jewellery is inspired by natural and organic forms or beings as is mine and he also is influenced by and uses historical methods and techniques of metalsmithing mainly Ancient egyptian methods.

What I like most is he uses a very ethical approach to making his jewellery from the simple tools and techniques he uses to the materials, such as locating ethincally-sourced Gold, he even went so far as to pan for his own Gold which took a lot of time and patience but he eventually found a nugget and then went on to make a piece of jewellery from it. I love it...

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Stamped Flower earrings.



These earrings are a reflection of the handmade quality which I want to achieve with my jewellery. I have created these earrings using thin silver plate, I used a different alloy of silver containing half the amount of copper, I prefer this alloy as it seems to be whiter in colour and does not tarnish as quickly. If it were not so soft to work with I would love to use fine silver only, as it is in its purest form and it will never tarnish, perhaps if it were thoroughly work hardened it would be stronger, what I really want to achive is and alloy of silver which will never tarnish. Petag is one option where Platinum is added but this would greatly increase the cost to make and price of the jewellery.


I when I created these earrings I kept in mind the flaws found in ethnic jewellery so I tried not to be too careful when I stamped the pattern into the metal. Although I wanted my punching to be fairly neat and accurate I wasn't bothered by it being out of place if I happened to misplace my punch. I also drew the flower onto the metal by hand to ensure a more handmade look and feel, as you may notice each petal is slightly different. Lastly, I used a punch/stamp which I made by hand to create the petal-like edge, I was also not too careful to stamp the edge perfectly by evenly spacing the punch.