Engraving

I am learning to hand engrave on silver. It is very difficult and painstaking but I love the fact that it is a very direct way of patterning metal. Yes I have a tool in my hand but it is a small tool, used almost as an extension of my hand.

I took a workshop 18 months ago where I first picked up gravers to work on silver. I planned to go home and start practising right away but I left it a long time as other things inevitably intervened. I started again this past winter and tried to practise regularly but it wasn't going right so I contacted the instructor of the workshop - Jane Short - and she invited me to come to her studio for a day of instruction and practice. It was wonderful and just what I needed to get the feel of it again and ask a lot of questions.

I am not so interested in traditional engraving, script and lettering, scrolls and figures. I want to use the technique within my own aesthetic sense. It combines well with enamelling as you can engrave a recess for the enamel to sit in which can itself be further engraved with pattern as I have done with the piece above.

I am aiming to practise often now. A little everyday is ideal and I did that for several months cluminating in this piece of engraving fired with enamel. I must start on another piece right away as time flies and I don't want to get rusty. 

New Studio

Spring is not quite in the air here in the south-east of England but I think it won't be long, the daffodils are in bud and just waiting for some warm sun. Nevertheless I am excited because we will be building a studio in the garden next month. Since moving back to England I have mourned the loss of my old studio in Canada. Under-appreciated at the time it was merely part of the basement of our large house, nicely warmed by the furnace and with the laundry sink close by with hot and cold running water, two windows looking out on my garden.

At this moment I am renting an old cowshed on a farm - clean and painted white inside admittedly but draughty and cold with no natural light, no sink and only cold water available outside. When I first rented it there were other artists on the farm too, a couple who do hand book-binding and a woman who carved granite sculptures. They were lovely and made it bearable. Since they have left and some unfriendly characters  moved in I no longer want to be there at all.

So, the decision to build a studio taking up part of our small garden was made, costs debated over, savings pondered and finally we gave the go ahead to a local man who is happy to have my husband help him build a wood framed fully insulated 'shed'. I can't wait for it to start and have already bought a climbing rose to grow over it.

New Year Resolutions

Rowan Berries in the Snow

When I first started my jewellery-making studio I had a lot of time to make pieces for exhibitions and shows because I had no customers taking up my time! Now I have managed to build up a number of customers but I no longer have time to make exhibition pieces. Of course it would be wonderful if all the exhibition pieces I made, I sold to my customers, then I would be able to have my cake and eat it, so to speak. Sadly it doesn't seem to work that way ...yet. I still hold out hope that I can turn things around.

Meanwhile, as I do every New Year, I am making a few 'rules' for myself and my art practice:

• stop selling on consignment at places where my pieces don't sell quickly, the pieces are just languishing there
• take some 'retreat' time to focus solely on ideas
• say no to repairing other peoples jewellery - why is this so difficult to do??
• stop worrying about worrying too much
• stop spending so much time on the computer
• stop spending so much time on Etsy, it is like a time-sponge and is only a small part of my business
• realise I can't do everything I want to do, so something has to go - this year it is less downhill skiing, and less knitting-group get togethers
• spend more time just wondering and thinking with my sketch book open in front of me
• stop thinking about money and how I need more of it
• get out of the production work head space whereby it is all about time and price

Well, I expect I could think up a lot more rules but as I said I must cut down on computer time. Now I am going to the work bench to see what gee-gaws I can clear away to make room for those exhibition pieces in the works.

Christmas Rush

This blog has fallen by the wayside recently as I am experiencing a Christmas rush of people requiring jewellery! The last two Christmases have been down compared to the great years of 2006 and 2007, but it seems that things are picking up again. As a sole proprietor in a creative business, working alone, I simply take whatever comes my way, unable to predict the highs and lows of business, I simply float along with the current like a leaf on a stream. I will be back soon when I have more time.

Aaaagh!

I know that everyone makes mistakes and does thoughtless things in the studio but sometimes when you are on your own and make a doozy of a blunder you have the feeling that no-one else would be as stupid. Here is what I did over the weekend so you all can learn from my disaster...

By the end of Friday I had completed five new necklaces in silver and enamel. All that remained to do was to add a sterling silver jump ring to each piece and to carefully solder it closed. I have done this before quite a few times and using extra-easy solder and a very small torch flame have been successful. I have also briefly pickled the pieces to clean up the jump ring with no problems.

Saturday morning: I went ahead with the process as described but as I took the pieces out of the pickle pot I noticed the enamel was matte not glossy and pitted looking on each piece. Eventually I figured out that the pickle I was using was stronger than normal - I recalled I had made up a strong batch some time before and it was much evaporated and so even stronger. So there I was holding a bunch of ruined pendants.

I spent all saturday removing jump rings, stoning down enamel and refiring and re-soldering rings. As for re-pickling, I just poured some pickle into a small container and held the pendat upside down so only the jump ring was submerged - worked fine.

Organised Randomness

My most recent commission was an exercise in organised randomness. How to creatively arrange a group of stones so that they looked pleasingly random on top of the ring? I could have spent weeks just re-arranging the stones within the circle endlessly, never quite satisfied that they looked really random. Obviously there was a limit to how long I could spend so what did I do?

I started with 16 stones. I took out two, one was badly chipped and the other was a very strange uneven cut. Of the remainder I found two matching ones, one to go on each shoulder of the shank which I put aside. That was the easy part. I was left with one big stone, three medium big stones and eight very very small stones.

I played around with the composition of these stones for several days! I was aiming for a casual looking arrangement whereby the stones looked easily spaced out but not evenly spaced. I put aside one of the tiny stones to give me an odd number, this helped. In the end I never did really resolve the arrangement to my complete satisfaction but I had to stop and actually make the ring so that is what I forced myself to do. Even after I had soldered all the bezels in place I was still tempted to add the last little stone but I knew it would only make the design slightly different, not better, so I resisted the temptation.

Wet and Cold

I am having a hard time getting down to work these days. The weather here has been so cold and wet for the past two months that it is starting to get me down. After a long winter everyone here in British Columbia looks forward to a warm spring, but this year it isn't happening.

You would think that I would be able to get cosy in my studio with the kiln warming the place up, and I have to a certain extent, but I keep obsessing about the weather, going outside to check if anything is growing, and generally not concentrating on what I should be doing.

So here, I am cheering myself up with a picture of sweet peas from my garden taken last year, I can only hope everything will catch up soon.

Good news for jewellers and other crafts people in Canada, Cheryl Fraser is re-opening her gallery, Zilberschmuck, in Toronto. Cheryl is a gem to work with and I am looking forward to sending off a parcel of work for the gallery soon.

Daily Work

Some people may think that the life of an artist is an easy one, not real work perhaps. But it is the life that I have chosen so I thought I would write about a typical day in my studio.

As my job is mostly sedentary I always feel better if I get some exercise first thing, for me it is the best way to start the day. So at 8am I get outside and go for a run, three seasons of the year, in winter I cross-country ski and when the weather is bad for either I go to the gym. By the time I get home, shower, change, make a cup of tea and get into the studio it is usually exactly 10am. I put on the radio, CBC, and start listening to Q, my favourite program.

Usually I have something that I am half-way through on the work bench. It could be a custom piece, maybe a wedding ring with a gemstone, or I could be making inventory for my online shop or one of the galleries I sell my work in. My activities could be one of many, such as cutting, texturing, forming metal, setting a stone, soldering and joining metal, finishing and polishing. Or maybe I'm using up scrap metal, melting and pouring an ingot or drawing out wire to different thicknesses. I mostly make everything myself that goes into my jewellery, rarely buying ready-made components. This is because if I make it myself I can put my own style in it, if I buy it, it will be the same as everyone elses.

I break for lunch at noon and always take an hour to eat and relax. Then it is back to the studio. I'll spend the afternoon doing the same range of things trying to get ahead with several pieces, or completely finishing one piece, depending if it is custom work or not. If I am enamelling I'll set the kiln to heat up while I am having lunch, then I'll clean all the work bench of metal, tools and dust and get the enamels ready for use. I usually work through until 5 or 6 pm, it varies depending on workload and whether I or my husband is cooking dinner tonight. I'm sure other jewellers work longer hours but I do what is right for me. I put all my tools away at the end of the day, cover the rolling mill and let the hydraulic press down, turn off the torch and the pickle pot.

Of course some days are different, there is book-keeping every month and running to the post office with shipments of jewellery to mail. And don't forget designing, sketching, photographing, making prototypes, pricing, and ordering materials. Meeting clients for custom work is a favourite part of my job, but it can be time-consuming if it turns into a social occasion. After dinner I usually spend an hour or two on the computer catching up on work-related email, sorting out jewellery photos, checking jewellery organization newsletters, making applications for various things - juried shows, grants and other opportunities that crop up.

I do this five days a week, well sometimes it is four and other times six,at busy times (Christmas) seven. Of course I can organize my schedule how I want which is great but I do have to be disciplined or it would all fall apart. I take a bit of extra time off when I get busy in my garden or if the powder is especially good in winter, but this has been my routine for ten years and it works for me. If there are other artists out there I would love to hear about your daily routine too.