Fine silver and chalcedony pendant.
Congratulations to our latest Student of the Week- Julie Low. This fabulous granulated pendant is all the more impressive when you know that this was made during Julie’s second semester. That isn’t a lot of classes to be accomplishing something on this level. We have discussed granulation recently so I thought we could go over the technique used to make the bail, repousse’.
Repousse’ means working your metal from the back or reverse side to create a raised effect. Many students have a hard time telling the difference between repousse’ and chasing, another technique used to texture or raise metal. The distinction is simple, though. Repousse’ is working metal from the back and chasing is working metal from the front. In the case of Julie’s bail (what the chain goes through) we started with a simple drawing on paper of the three wires used to get the right proportion to the pendant and to make sure it would accommodateher chain. We usually just have the student cut out the drawing and hold it up to the pendant to see if the size works. Once the proportion looked right, Julie used three 22 gauge fine silver wires for the “bones” of her bail, the center one straight and the two outsides wires curved to meet at the two ends. They are fused down flat to .010 fine silver and cut out. This is when the repousse’ comes in. Julie used highly polished daps (Remember: any nick or scratch on your tool gets transferred immediately to your piece!) to press the metal in smoothly between the wires. This is done on top of a piece of leather but folded up paper towels have also worked just fine. After the grooves look even and the edges well defined, you flip it over, anneal and gently bend to bring the ends together. A bail is born. Julie did a beautiful job on her bail and the rest of her piece. Well done!
jeanettecaines
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What a beautiful piece. I currently only work with different shapes, gauges and tempers to make my jewelry and other than relearning soldering -I don’t think I will learn any more advanced metalsmithing
To many kids in college. Just wanted you to know that this piece grabbed my eye and I would purchase in a second.
Nan C. Borton