Fan earrings 3

This was the next step, I decided to use one continual wire where I created a loop at the top instead of soldering the two wires together. I found the loop looked too narrow and disproportional.

Fan eaarrings 2

I then decided to bring the Golden mean into the proportion as I am working with sacred geometry, so I worked out the proportions in terms of the length of wire touching the fan to the length of the wire running to the tip where the two wires meet. When compared to the previous wire length I find this one much more visually pleasing and proportional.

Fan earrings1

These are the earrings that I made in platinum for the anglo plat competition, I have decided to make them in copper as well as silver. They have a rustic African feel to them and I thought that by making them in copper and patinating them into a turquoise blue, it would further accentuate the Rustic feel.
This photo shows my first thought patterns as to the wire that I wanted to solder to the ‘fans’ so they can be hung from a shepherds hook.

Crit with Brenda Ridgewell

I had a very interesting and motivating conversation with Brenda Ridgewell, the Director of Jewellery and 3D Design at Curtin University, Western Australia. She told me that she really liked my work and she had seen it at the NSA Gallery, I told her that it needed replenishing as I felt quite embarrased because I have been neglecting my stand, due to circumstances and only have one piece left to show, she told me that I should keep renewing it as it looks bad from a supplying point of veiw to the seller's at NSA or elsewhere.
Brenda also told me that I must carry on using the technique and designs that I use but develop them more which she said is about 30 years in the making as development never really ends so long as you stick with the same idea or technique.

Future Intentions: handmade with African Spirit

I want to build up an industry which focuses on creating and selling quality, handmade goods which are not your run of the mill items. In other words I would like to make, design and source items which are made by South Africans, such as Jewellery, shoes, bags and even ornaments which emanate a truly African spirit without being your predictable, cliche items found in curio shops. I want each piece to be handmade using hands-on, time honored techniques that are not a result of mass-production processes such as mould making, dye-forming or assembly-line production. There is just one issue regarding this type of industry which is the labour cost, each item tends to be more expensive due to the amount of time it takes to manufacture the items, I do not want these goods to only be accessible to the higher earning class so I would have to find a balance so that lower earning people can afford it too, perhaps by creating and sourcing smaller, less time consuming goods made from cheaper materials.

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...

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.