Wow, I’ve just looked at the last time I wrote in my blog, and around 18 months. I only really have one excuse – I was busy having a baby. It’s amazing how much time these little ones take up! But I haven’t been completely quiet on the jewellery front. In particular, I decided to do one last thing for me before baby came along, and signed up for the Intermediate Silver Jewellery class at London Jewellery School.
The Intermediate Silver Jewellery class is amazing and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has some basic silver smithing skills, and wants to brush up or learn some more complicated techniques. It’s a 5 week course and you spend the time working on a project of your choosing. Every week, the tutor also brings some items to show or teaches a new skillset.
I opted to make a silver bangle. One of the things that’s always bothered me about my jewellery is that it always looks flat. So I really wanted to make something with a bit of form. This is what I came up with:
The class was brilliant. If I hadn’t been on the class, I wouldn’t have been able to make this bangle (for starters, my soldering torch just isn’t strong enough).
My one pitfall is that I didn’t make the bangle large enough as I forgot to factor in that the 3D “leaf” doesn’t sit flat on the wrist. But all in all a useful learning experience.
My next project: making a bracelet charm for my daughter’s 1st birthday! Very excited!
Just a few lines to express my thanks for your blog & how valuable it’s been.
I’ve been thinking about getting back to jewellery making after a hiatus of the best part of 40 years. Although I started in almost the opposite direction to you. I never had a single, formal, lesson. My girlfriend(at the time)’s brother was a jeweller,working out the back of his father’s watch & jewellery shop and, with Mum & Dad going on holiday, he needed someone come sit in the shop. So’s he could go have a pee without having to close up store every time! With nothing else particular to do, I did him a favour. A favour lasted the best part of two years.
Getting bored sitting reading the paper, he gave me a few simple tasks. Pass the time. Stringing beads.. Bit of polishing. And we sort of got carried away. Couple of weeks & I was up to ring sizing, soldering charms on charm bracelets, rolling & drawing wire & on & on & on. Ended up doing complicated repairs – we did restoration work for the V&A’s jewellery exhibition & outwork for a couple of big West End stores. And quite a bit of manufacturing. Rings, earings, necklaces, bracelets … Some hand-made chains. All sorts of stuff.
But all things come to an end. I found a better, or at least different, job opportunity. The girlfriend & I parted ways. So I never went back to it. Until now.
Now I’ve time on my hands, the money to do it, I fancy rekindling an old interest. But after all this time I’m going to have to teach myself how to do it. Right from first principles. Why your blog’s so fascinating. I’m watching you learning the things I learnt. Reminding me where I made mistakes & how I got out of them. And, like I said, I learnt the craft backwards. I just learned the things necessary to do whatever particular thing I was working on. So there’s big gaps where if I didn’t confront it, I didn’t have to learn it. If you’ve the complete set of tools to hand & anything out of the Johnson Matthey catalogue to work with, you don’t tend to learn all the basics. Now I’ve two years of your experience to draw on. Fill them in. Brilliant!