Rose Window test pieces

These are some rose window test pieces, I am trying to create more accurate representations of rose windows as apposed to the radiating circles of the first rose window earrings I created.
At the moment I am not sure where to go with these but I plan to draw some rose windows with a maths set to get a deeper understanding of how they are constructed.

Stamped test piece Star of david

This is the beginning pattern of the flower of life, it highly resembles the Star of David.

Flower of Life test piece resembling Islamic art

This is the opposite side of the stamped and punched FOL test piece. The pattern in this test piece resembles the geometric patterns in Islamic art.

Stamped and punched Flower of Life test piece

This piece had a different effect as I punched each petal with a flat marquise stamp and punched through with a triangular punch.

Stamped test piece Flower of Life

I have been making some flat-tipped punches for stamping patterns rather than punching through, the punch used on this piece was made by my father who is an engineer and makes tools and dies, I asked him to make it because it is a concave equilateral triangle which is very difficult to make without proper machinery. I needed this punch because I wanted to try punch out the negative shapes of the flower of life pattern, I normally use a marquise punch to do this, so I asked him to make one that was flat-tipped for stamping and one with a sharp tip for punching through.

I like the way the pattern in the aluminium gets raised, with silver or copper it would be harder to create as it reacts differently and is more dense and rigid than aluminium.

Spiral of Nature

These are some test pieces I have been working on. It is a design which resembles the spiral whorls found in nature such as in Cacti and Sunflower heads. These spirals are diretly linked to the fibonacci sequence which is a series of numbers that occurs frequently in nature. It starts at one and is brought about by adding the previous 2 numbers ie. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89. Cacti's and sunflowers contain this sequence as they generally have a certain amount of spirals going anti-clockwise (such as 55) and a certain amount going clockwize ( such as 34) which correlates with the numbers in the fibonacci sequence, this is evidence that nature follows a specific set of mathematically and geometrically based proportions or ratio's.

I made this same design before in copper so i decided to make one in silver and enamel the punched holes. This picture shows the piece with a polished silver plate behind it to refract the light so it illuminates the coloured enamel, this gives it an Opalescent glow and has quite an aquatic feel to it.
I am not sure yet what this element will become I may use it for earrings or a pendant but there are a few issues that need to be resolved such as how to create an interesting and finished edge, for now i'm gonna let it stew for a bit.

Rose Window paper cut-outs

These are the paper cut-outs that I am using to roll mill onto my metal for the backing plate. I realised that the backing plate for the mandala bracelet needed some point of interest for the visible side which rests against the wrist. This is not necessary as it could've had a plain finish but this is what adds richness to a piece and separates it from being a piece of costume jewellery. After some thought I decided to create these mini rose window paper cut-outs to transfer the pattern onto metal, I had made these for my stand at Design Indaba and knew they were quick and easy to make. The only problem with these is there is a limit to the intricacy of the designs and when they were inprinted on the metal they seemed quite boring. So i'll try using the silver foil technique if that doesn't work then i'll have to come up with another idea.