Advanced Filigree DVD

Yehuda Tassa filling a flower component of a filigree pendant

Friend, filigree mentor, and filigree master Yehuda Tassa is about to release his second filigree how-to DVD. While reviewing the DVD for Yehuda in order to give him feedback before the final version is cut, I took some screenshots.

Yehuda Tassa, Yemenite Filigree Master, as seen in excerpt from his second DVD to be released in 2009

Back in the first few sessions of filigree workshops, Yehuda used to teach the flower project first. Once us intermediate students convinced him, he started teaching an easier project to the new students, and this is now a second project in his workshops.

Below are the first three things I ever created in filigree, years ago. The filler patterns that Yehuda is teaching are different than those in my pendant/pins. And, you'll notice I went for a prong setting in all three of my pieces; the DVD teaches a bezel set stone on a pendant. If the picture of my pieces looks familiar, perhaps you've seen the photo before in "The Art and Craft of Making Jewelry: A Complete Guide to Essential Techniques" by Joanna Gollberg, Lark Books.

"Fraternal Triplets"

Sterling and fine silver, amethyst, garnet, and peridot

Pendant/Pins

Vacuum Caster Modifications

The used vacuum caster I purchased started leaking oil after I turned it on the first time. So before turning it on again a revamp was required. The newer models are now built for servicability and for easy access to the oil input port. My older model required some modifications in order to make adding oil easier.

A trip to the hardware store seemed in order, and these are the parts from the plumbing and irrigation aisles that we thought would work.

Here are the parts installed, and below is a closeup of the modification to the oil input port.

Once the mods were made and oil was added, we ran the pump. If the pressure is low enough, water will turn to ice.

The pressure reached the max for this unit, and the water was very cold. Need a more powerful pump to make ice!

Sharing Textures

The local metal clay guild held a texture swap last weekend. Attendees brought different found, created, or purchased objects to share. The offerings ranged from fabric to carved polymer clay molds to a piece of cauliflower to a piece of worm eaten wood from an apple tree in someone's yard. Those worms are quite the artists.



Regular Sculpey (TM) was given to paid members, and after everyone had snacked, the polymer clay prep and molding began. One of the chapter officers brought four pasta machines for everyone to use. Some people, I was one of them, brought two part RTV molding compound.

While my work will still use only the molds I take when I travel, and/or my interpretation of my travels, I now have many molds to share with students when I teach.

More Volts & Amps

When it was time for more electrolytic etching I decided to try the trickle charger as the source. Well . . . whoever named it was accurate: trickle means trickle. Even the C batteries caused more bubbles in the saltwater when they were hooked up. My friend Pat had a great idea to check the local electronics store for a battery that would suit our need (desire) for speed. Plan B meant a perusal of the battery aisle. I now know why UPS units for computers are so heavy - they have all these dense batteries inside of them.

A guy in the test/measurement department obliged us and broke out some new leads to test whether the chosen UPS battery had a charge. Yes, it did. And, it works very nicely. The good news is that when I drain the battery, I can hook it up to the trickle charger and recharge it. So, the trickle charger will be used indirectly after all.



Pat had a great idea to hide the leads behind a piece of wood to reduce the salty moisture that could deposit on them. The 18 gauge copper wire holding the cathode copper kept being etched away and dropping the etched copper piece into the solution.



After doubling the copper wire, in order to obtain double the time we had before the copper fell into in the bath, I remembered that I'd covered the leads with electrical tape before.



The yellow duct tape masked off the ends and back of one of these bracelet-to-be copper pieces. I kept taping and covered the leads, giving the copper all the time in the solution that I wanted. After three etches, the solution slowed down a bit, which was perfect because the bracelet-to-be pieces will be forged so they need to keep a decent amount of thickness to them.



On the above piece I covered the entire back and edges with rubber cement, which held up well in the saltwater solution.

I was in a rubber cement mood, so all of these textures were the result of applying rubber cement and then scraping it off with a toothpick.

Copper and Bronze Pieces, and Auto White Balance

In January I posted a picture of bronze and copper metal clay pieces drying on a hot plate. The pieces were fired and this is how they looked before I began to patch the bronze pieces. Note that the bronze clay cracked much more than the same shapes would have in silver metal clay. The bronze clay was from the original batch handed out in mid-2008 by Rio Grande; many people report that it has improved since then.

In my previous post I mentioned that the copper clay was very moist and hard to work with. The results show that it kept it's general shape very well, yet the weight of the clay itslef pushed some of the texture flat. The inside of the round part of the toggle illustrates this. Since I tried Hadar Jacobson's copper clay, she has started selling the copper clay as a powder (and also bronze clay powder) which you can mix yourself to the consistency you desire. Note that the absence of drying/firing cracks in the copper clay. The bottom two pieces are made from copper clay, the top five pieces are made from bronze clay.

As I took the above picture, I decided to play with the Auto White Balance (AWB) feature on my camera. There are many settings such as 'daylight', 'tungsten', and 'fluorescent.' The choice of which AWB to use made a big difference in the photos. The photo above was adjusted in Photoshop (TM) in order to match the white background a little more to what it would be with proper lighting. View the unedited photos of different AWB settings at this link to see the what a drastic difference the AWB choices make. The pictures were taken late in the afternoon with indirect natural light and overhead full-spectrum bulbs.

Sheet to Rocks

My recent experience in a chasing and repousse' cuff bracelet workshop was very enjoyable. Davide Bigazzi is a great instructor; the three of us all learned a lot and two of us walked away with bracelets that were almost done. The other Sherry in the workshop finished hers!

I spent the day after the workshop finishing mine. Sawing, filing, and finishing ... here it is:

My inspiration for the bracelet was this photo taken at dusk, years ago, at Poipu Beach, Kauai.

Davide Bigazzi is a great instructor; the three of us students all learned a lot and two of us walked away with bracelets that were almost done. The other Sherry in the workshop finished hers!

If you're contemplating taking a workshop from Davide, I highly recommend it. Besides all that you'll learn, it is therapeutic to hammer away on the metal. :) 

Back to Work

The vacation is over and it's back to making jewelry. Time to take the earring out of the thermoform plastic shellac and finish it.

The thermoform plastic shellac hardens when cooled or at room temperature, and softens when immersed in hot water. The material becomes clear and pliable. To remove the earring, I heated up a container of hot water, immersed the whole assembly and removed the earring from it's plastic shellac jig.

When cooled back down again, the plastic shellac starts turning back white, and becoming firm. To re-use it again, simply immerse it in hot water, insert the piece to be worked on, and cool it back down again.

Humpback Whales: Breaching and Singing

The picture of a humpback whale breaching was taken on a recent trip to a dive site. The underwater video from on one of our dives allows you hear the whale singing.



We were underwater when this underwater earthquake hit. The quake was very loud underwater and reverberated unlike anything we'd heard and felt before. Which makes sense, since it's the first time we've been underwater near an underwater earthquake! We were confused, because we'd been listening to the whale the whole time and it suddenly sounded very different. :) The sound made sense the next day when our dive master told us there had been an earthquake. One of her dive master friends had also been underwater to hear it and figured it out when the quake was mentioned on the evening news and the times matched.

What does all this underwater stuff have to do with my artwork? The article I wrote for a zine explains.

Textures from the Sea

One person's candle decoration is another person's source of textures.

Look for some of these textures to be incorporated in my work. The urchin shell texture will be especially nice when shrunk 30%; it'll be nice and crisp.

Green Jewelry

On Saturday I attended the Green Jewelry class at the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in SF. The day was full of interesting information that ranged from how metals, diamonds and gemstones are mined to what we can do to help with the environmental and social issues due to mining. We learned tips about rethinking our studio practices in order to help the environment. And, we were treated to three live demonstrations and were shown images of work created with found objects.

The instructors were very enthusiastic about the topics, very knowledgeable and very friendly. Jennifer Horning is one of the original founders of Ethical Metalsmiths and has experience in mining law. She also creates jewelry. Christine Dhein is the Assistant Director at the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts, incorporates found objects in her metal work, and authors articles and DVDs on a wide range of metalsmithing topics. Christine Dhein authors the Green Jewelry newsletter, which you can subscribe to by emailing her.

If you have an opportunity to take this class, or to listen to a shorter lecture by Ethical Metalsmiths, I highly recommend it. The Metal Arts Association of Silicon Valley is working with Ethical Metalsmiths to arrange a lecture in the fall of this year. Keep an eye on the Metal Arts Association of Silicon Valley's website for more details, or sign up to be on their mailing list using the link on their home page.

Below is a photo I took on the way to the Green Jewelry class. As you can see, it was a beautiful clear day in the city.

 

Christine Dhein is thinking about creating a blog where we can access her past newsletter articles. In the meantime, here are a few more ecologically oriented art blogs for those who are interested (there are some different ones listed in my blog links at the right):

Eco Art Blog

RSA Arts and Ecology

The Green Museum

On the Bench

On the bench today are some earrings in process; I'm working on the silver to fit white topaz and garnet stones with different dimensions. Also on the bench is the fork tine I need to shape in order to set the stones. And at the top of the picture are some pieces of silver I cast years ago. Interesting pieces; I found them while looking for an opal triplet I created years ago.



I wonder what I had in mind for them - if anything. I might have just been playing with the pink sheet wax to see what I could do. Now I have an idea for them to be used in a bracelet. The two odd pieces out will probably become earrings.

Making Molds

Using the yellow molding rubber, I'm molding a bottleneck ring and also a custom order signet ring. I'd like both rings to be a little bit smaller than the originals are. 

Inside the mold on the left is an earring in pink molding rubber that will become a pair of earrings set with clear topaz. I'm using the pink rubber for this mold because the earring being molded was made to fit the stones, and the pink shrinks less than the yellow.

Bronze & Copper Toggles

Last night I spent several hours with my good friends Pat and Kathleen playing with Bronze and Copper metal clay for the first time. They are prepping for a hands-on workshop on Feb 8th in Los Gatos for the local metal clay group (SFBASCG.) 

Both Pat and Kathleen had played with the new clays already; in fact Kathleen has made many many pieces with the bronze clay. As for me, well - I have now opened, and used, the free sample pack of bronze I received last summer!

One of the toggle clasps might look nice with a hand knit copper bracelet that's been sitting on my bench without a clasp for quite a while....

As a bonus, I talked with Pat's newly certified diving husband about his first dive trip. We also talked about places we'd like to go diving; our lists are both long. :)

Kathleen has kindly offered to fire my bronze and copper (product in development by Hadar Jacobsen) pieces for me in her charcoal setup. We'll see if all the bronze flakes I managed to get on the copper make a difference.

Knitting wire in front of the TV

While watching TV these past couple of weeks, I've also been working on some new combinations in knitted wire chain. I tried mixing copper and fine silver wire at the same time, copper only, two strands of fine silver, and increasing and decreasing the size of my loops.

I'm seeing a funky bracelet in this sampler piece. Now it's time to create the sample where I pull the chain through the drawplate to see how my double strand pieces look once drawn....

Electrolytic Saltwater Etching of Copper

Results from electrolytic saltwater etching of copper



In my days at a semiconductor capital equipment company I made a lifelong friend. When we first met, she was a "process" engineer who etched the dielectric material on silicon wafers; then she etched conductive materials; then she was a product support engineer, et cetera.

A month ago I showed her the Art Jewelry magazine article on etching copper, nickel silver, brass and other materials in a salt water solution using a D cell battery. As an etcher, she was very interested. She'd never etched at home. Her current company (where they have a chemical that etches metal in only 20 seconds) is on holiday break, so this week she's free to come out and play.

Play we did - in our nerdy way. The local Radio Shack had only one single D cell battery holder, prompting an etching experiment. I purchased the single D holder, and also holders for a single C and two Cs.

We placed two sets of copper anodes and cathodes in almost identical etch setups at the same time. The main differences between the two was the number of C batteries and the resist designs on the copper.



Loooooook at the difference in the water color after a few minutes. The double C setup skipped the blue-green water phase and headed right to the orange water phase of the process. After five minutes the copper had significantly etched. After an hour, the copper was more than ready to be taken out. The single C battery tub etched much slower; after 2 hours the depth of the etch was still shallower than the 1 hour double C etch.

We etched both sides of the anode and purposely ignored recommendations to duct tape the edges - as you can see on Ben's piece at the far left.



Next time the process will be tweaked a little. Some rubber cement on the lead to the anode. Alligator clips instead of twisted and wrapped wires. Perhaps try a new type of metal. Duct tape on the edges. And, we'll measure the voltage and current from the single and double C setups and compare to the recommended single D setup.

By the way, we were shocked not to find a molecular orbital diagram of the process on wikipedia! ;-)

Patina Expeirment Results

As promised...here are some photos of the brass bracelet and copper piece I was experimenting with in October.



I left the brass bracelet in the fuming container much longer than recommended, and the colored patina you saw in October washed off. Now that I've pushed that patina past it's time limit, I'll revisit it again someday and see how long to fume it so the blue greens stay.


The moist sorrel washed off leaving nice colors on the copper sample.




My favorite new copper patina is shown below on flat and hammered copper samples. The fuming recipe is comprised of sea salt, cream of tartar, vinegar, and ammonia.



You'll be able to read more about the cream of tartar patina in my "Accessible Patinas" article in the upcoming zine which Catherine Witherell and Deryn Mentock are publishing. They are busy compiling all the articles together now for a January release. More details to come.

Another fun result from the copper patina experiments is a mottled blue / green from sal ammoniac and tobacco. The results lead me to wonder what would happen if I ground up the tabacco even finer before this immersion process.



Here's a closeup look at the flat piece after rinsing

Lireille Gallery of Contemporary Jewelry and Art

Today I met with Yan Liu, co-owner of Lireille Gallery of Contemporary Jewelry and Art. If you stop by Lireille Gallery, you can now see seventeen of my necklaces, 30 pairs of earrings, and 20 rings. If you'd like a preview of my art work at Lireille Gallery, I created a catalog of the items in the gallery and posted it on my website on the gallery page.

One of the two new rings I created the night before is shown below. I took my cast sterling bottleneck ring design and applied texture and patina. The liver of sulfur left a very interesting purplish pink color in the grooves after the ring was cleaned in the ultrasonic. The flush set stones are 2mm and 2.5mm white topaz. (sorry for the picture quality - I should have left time for a photo session.) If you'd like a better look - it's in the Lireille Gallery.





I also took the same Bottleneck design in sterling silver, with the same textured finish, left it unpatinated and flush set 2mm peridot stones.

I like playing with the finishes and patinas. Which reminds me, I promised some more of my patina experiment pics in an earlier post which I'll get to soon.


Here's the rainbow over 880 seen on my way to Lireille Gallery.

A Beach Full of Other People's Trash

On Monday night I cruised a beach on the Yucatan Peninsula looking for dead coral for making texture molds. In the picture below you'll see some of the pieces I found. And, *look* at all the sea glass I found. I was so excited I had to limit myself to picking up the less common colors.

Sure, I picked up a few dark brown and Heineken green, but look at all the light green and bluish green pieces! Other people's trash are now my treasures. The ideas for necklaces and rings and bracelets made with these pieces are swimming in my head. I wish I had more time before this weekend's show so I could make some of them. I'll let you know when I do and show you some pictures.

Clear Water, Clear Mind

SCUBA diving in clear warm water clears my mind, and a result I have new ideas for some earrings to create for this next weekend's The Virgin Artists' 6th Annual Show and Sale in Cupertino.

Look at the lush coral landscape in this minimally impacted area of the Carribean.

And, views like this when I'm above the water sure help!

Coral: Slow, Beautiful, and Precious

I ran across the Too Precious to Wear website today http://www.tooprecioustowear.org/
I think the site does a nice job of providing an overview of the affect that coral collecting has; both scientifically and on the local economies. The site also provides a list of alternatives to using coral.

Those of you who know me already know that the sea environment is important to me. A trip to Cocos Island years ago highlighted the difference in fish and crustacean populations in a managed marine reserve vs. the open fishing which goes on in most of our oceans. The marine reserve around Cocos was lush relatively speaking, but our dive guide who'd been visiting for 20 years said that even the reserve was far less lush than it had been in the past. The creatures go in and out of the reserve, and many are fished and can't come back.



On several trips to Belize over the years, I've noticed the dwindling coral populations and the decline in reef fish populations. Since the fish help the coral by cleaning off algae and the coral are often the nurseries for the fish, when one or both are affected, both populations decline.

Growing at rates of 0.6 cm - 3.9 cm / year, the colonies of tiny animals known collectively as coral are very vulnerable to man made disruptions. And, since they are animals (not just the calcified shells of these animals that people collect in their homes once they are dead), I prefer to leave them alone. My jewelry is designed to showcase their beauty and share the experience of seeing coral without using coral directly.

I travel with molding compound and sit on the beach with dead coral, shells and lava bits I gather from the beach. I mold these natural objects so I can take their textural beauty home with me. When I'm finished molding the coral, shells and lava bits, I put them back where I found them so that nature can continue on with it's processes. The bits eventually decompose, but in the meantime they can be homes for tiny creatures.

Once I'm back home, I use the molded textures in my creations, and all these years later I'm still amazed by the variety of shapes I find. I'm also amazed by the similarities I can find in coral textures from different parts of the world.



I've include two pictures that show some of the coral diversity I've found and incorporated into my jewelry. The "Modern Cameo" line of jewelry as seen in "Craters" at the top of this post, ask the question "What's more precious? The profile of a person you don't know in a traditional cameo, or nature?"

If you're interested in the science, you can read more about coral growth rates at these sites:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_growth_and_climate_change

http://www.grisda.org/origins/06088.htm

If you'd like to see more coral textures in fine silver, check out my website: http://sherrycordova.com/