antiqued copper

15 May 2010

The evolution of a design

I talked in my last blog about how designs come about and that I see the design process rather like a tree – ideas branch out and grow and sometimes overlap other ideas and merge with them.

The design process for me is one of evolution, one thought often cannonballs into another and takes you in another direction – often without any conscious intention or control whatsoever – in fact, for me, this process is sometimes so energetic that keeping it under some modicum of control is the tricky part.

The spiral links I’d been working with previously, in a smaller gauge of wire and size, hammered smooth and highly polished. Here worked in Sterling silver for earrings.

It would seem very unlikely for me to ever be heard uttering the words that ‘I’m stuck for inspiration’ or ideas or ‘don’t know what to work on’. I must have hundreds of sketches yet to take form and variations of pieces already made waiting for realisation, that my biggest problem is deciding how to prioritise on what I give my time. I spend much of my life in perpetual frustration where I have ideas I want to work on and are spilling out of my mind, but other things I just have to do first.

A single spiral link in an intermediate size, used as a connector in these leaf themed earrings. I adjusted the wire gauge to give rise to a leaf spiral around the same size as the glass leaves I wanted to use. Antiqued smoothly hammered copper.

I don’t think, perhaps beyond the age of about 12, I have ever uttered the words “I’m bored”. The concept is totally alien to me. I must have about a million things on my ‘to do’ list – things I want to work on, things I want to try, things I want to learn, books I want to read, places I want to visit – that life is way, way too short to squander any of it in being bored.

That’s how it has been this week design-wise – one idea morphing into another and some ideas I had on the back burner, bubbling away in my subconscious, suddenly gained momentum when brought into contact with some new thought.

I’m still not entirely done with the spiral links I’ve done a lot of lately. It’s such a versatile unit to work with that they take on different guises depending on the size you make them and the finish you give them. This week I went much smaller with them than the links I’d used in bracelets and they come out lovely and delicate and deliciously fluid when worked together and finished and polished to a high degree.

Hammering them smooth and then polishing them gives a reflective, tactile chain that you just want to stroke. They can be used singly as connectors with interest, or collectively as a chain. See photos above.

This was meant to be an experiment to see if the idea I’d sketched would actually work, but I quite like how it turned out as a finished piece in itself, so I finished it off by antiquing. The beads are unakite.

I’d seen some fabulous work in copper this week using lots of wire wrapping – this is something I admire, but perhaps don’t have the patience or technique yet to work on anything extensive, but I had some ideas I wanted to work through too – my initial idea was to make a large spiral link, as above, but wrap the bottom open section with beads.

I was trying to ascertain a methodology for attaching beads around the outside of the shape with wire wrapping and wanted to work with balled head pins and came up with this technique, which I worked out on paper first and seeing that there were flaws in my original ideas, they needed working out. The pendant above was the result of that process – the pins needed anchoring in some way to prevent them from being too easily bent away from the master shape they were wrapped around.

This pendant was the next incarnation along my ideas branch. It was made initially as a leaf (soldered and hammered into shape), that I was going to wrap with small green aventurine beads like the round pendant above, but I decided it was going to come out too large with beads as well, so wrapped it with just the ball ended pins and connected the fine chain in the wrapping as I went.

Having suspended it on the chain the way that I have and without the green beads I was intending, it now looks rather more like a heart than a leaf. I’d made the ball pins as a rosy colour and deliberately allowed this to remain as I antiqued and polished the piece.

Continuing along my branch of ideas, these earrings came about after working the heart/leaf without beads, I sketched some shapes that would work well with that particular wrapping technique – it needed smooth round outer curves or straight lines ideally and this shape allowed me to get a ‘circle’ without soldering, as I wanted to only part wrap the shape and this balanced the bottom detail and intense texture with further interest at the top.

I decided that to balance the round earring, the earwires needed to either be round in shape, which didn’t work as nicely as I hoped, or in some other way reflect the details. So I went with a long straight drop earwire, to drop the wide earrings well below the ear and mirrored the wrapping with a wrapped loop rather than an eye to connect the earrings.

After oxidising, I decided to only polish back the wrapped details and leave this highlighted against the darker gunmetal finish of the scroll and I also highlighted the wraps on the earwires too. I think, having taken that particular evolutionary journey this week through these designs, this is the one I like best.

23 Apr 2010

This week I have mostly been working in copper

“The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper” Thomas Carlyle, Victorian essayist.

Hammered copper, heavily antiqued, spiral link bracelet.
Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

The last couple of weeks have been hectic – an assortment of commissions to complete, work commitments, domestic dramas, our visiting son (I’d like to think he comes home from university to catch up with his Mum, but in reality he was only availing himself of my fast broadband connection, as the dent in my bandwidth allowance will testify) and even some time away over Easter.

So if anyone happened to be so devoid of entertainment they were monitoring my publicly visible work rate, they’d perhaps consider me tardy of late – I haven’t seemingly had much to show for the long hours and exhaustion levels.

I spent a lot of time before we went away for Easter in preparing things to take with me to work on; part-made components to finish, components that I could make into ideas I had etc. – all in case of bad weather and the need to find things to do. I had enough materials with me to make a hundred pieces of jewellery. All I eventually managed was this necklace (with matching earrings) and another pair of earrings. Antiqued copper and green glass.

I quite liked the smooth look of the back of the antiqued bracelet above, where polishing off the oxidisation, left a pattern of colours on the smooth copper, from bright peach to a deep gunmetal type blue/grey. So I made another version without the hammered texture and will give this the same colour finish. I sometimes just like to enjoy them in their raw state before I give them their final colour.

A spiral wrapped Botswana agate bracelet in it’s raw copper just-tumbled state, which has since been deeply oxidised and extensively tumbled to a deep gunmetal warm grey.

But behind the scenes, like a little hammer-wielding gnome, I have been quietly (not that my hammering can ever be claimed to be quiet) producing several new pieces. But the making of the jewellery is the fun bit – that’s where I find my joy, peace from the world and my personal satisfaction – I get so embroiled with the details of shapes and the engineering of making things work properly that the world just passes me by and I often only come to my senses when the growling in my belly reminds me that I really should have had lunch several hours ago.

Hammered and elongated soldered chain link earrings, with rosy copper molten buds.

But once complete, after enjoying it for a short while on my own, I must present the result of my efforts to the world. I really can’t expect pieces to sell if they’re still sitting on my work bench unseen. And this is the part, like most artisan sellers and self-representing artists, that I find most tedious, time-consuming and plain disagreeable.

A pendant in progress, which has since been antiqued. I love to see raw shiny just-tumbled copper, so often take WIP photos at this stage. Just because the colour is so pretty.

As someone who has listed photography as a passion for an alarmingly large number of years, I do not find photographing my work to be in the least bit enjoyable. And despite having now done quite a lot of it and to have gradually honed my workflow to be about as efficient as I think I can get, it still seemingly takes an inordinate amount of time – far longer than it feels like it should or I’m happy to give it. And don’t even get me started on the process of measuring everything, working out a price and writing appropriate descriptions. I get through it by issuing myself with incentives – if I finish listing two items, I can work on the bracelet I’d started etc.

Large Serpentine beads spiral wrapped with copper into this bracelet with hand crafted hook and an adjustable chain closure and Aventurine dangle. The copper has been antiqued.

So, in the purely selfish interest of trying to make it look like I have actually done something of late, I present some of my latest pieces and the first photographs I’ve taken of them. I’ve also included some work in progress photos (WIP) as I often take photographs for my own reference and they don’t otherwise ever see the light of day.

Only another 25 pieces and several hours wrangling photo props and cameras and then manipulating images left to go!

9 Dec 2009

Design or serendipitous accidents?

Or . . . “today I haz mostly been working with copper”

Just depending on the combination of what needs to be done, available materials, customer commissions etc., my work tends to go in phases. Some weeks I’m perpetually soldering silver, melting blobs or wrapping loops. Other weeks, as this last one, my work has been fairly exclusively as metalsmithing copper.

An intermediate, pre-oxidising, stage of
some twisted rope necklaces I’m working on.
Please click on the photos to see a larger, sharper version.

I do love all sorts of different types of work – and I suppose that the very variety of what I end up making keeps me perpetually interested. Sometimes the therapeutic rhythm of joining rings for some of the loose chainmaille designs I do is just what is needed, other times I love to shape and form raw metal – I just love expending the energy and getting dirty hands. On another day, I love to lose myself in the still and clean work of some fine wire wrapping.

I like to make all my own raw components, that way
I get just what I want, in terms of workmanship and design.

And some days, like today, nothing hits the spot better than getting thoroughly dirty by shaping metal, hammering, soldering, pickling and oxidising – I find myself totally lost in the work and oblivious to the passage time and outside world.

I’ve tried keeping clean as I work and it’s just not possible. You need the fine control and touch that no tool can do better than your bare fingers – you need to feel the metal, you need to become intimate with every twist, turn and edge and you consequently end up thoroughly grubby. But nothing cleans dirty fingers quite as effectively as some nice soft moist fresh bread. It’s a tad alarming to get to the end of your cheese and tomato butty and realise that your hands are now thoroughly clean and moisturised.

These soldered copper rings are destined to become a bracelet,
inter-spaced with round buttons of spider web jasper.

A friend recently brought my attention to a design award that she thought might be of interest. Which whilst it was very flattering to come to mind when thinking about design, I never really think of my work as ‘designed’. It isn’t really, it largely just happens.

I perpetually have a head full of ideas waiting to take form – shapes and techniques vying for my attention – and as I work on one thing, it then sets off a whole new tangent of ideas – I always have far more ideas than I have time to work on – and every day as I learn and stretch myself, the world of possibility opens even wider. I’ve already scribbled several ideas down over breakfast this morning.

The twisted hammered ring in this pendant arose from a different idea
entirely and the curiosity to see if it would solder successfully. Which it did.

The finished and antiqued pendant, hung on belcher chain.

I often start off with an idea and then the metal takes me somewhere entirely different. Some designs end up exactly as I drew them – but more often they just don’t. The best pieces are often a serendipitous accident – sometimes an idea just doesn’t work how you’d envisioned it – either the metal doesn’t behave how you expect, it doesn’t look as nice as you’d hoped, or the proportions are wrong for what you had in mind, so it becomes something different. Sometimes that result itself opens up a whole new area of possibilities.

Twisted copper earrings that started out as a different idea entirely.

The earrings and pendant shown nearby are one such serendipitous result. I was twisting wire for some rope necklaces, as shown at the top, and in an attempt to get a twist as thick as I could, I tried twisting two strands of a heavier gauge – which wasn’t going to be suitable for the rope I wanted to make, but hammering it flat to open the twist right out gave an entirely different result than the idea I started with. My next version will combine silver and copper together and I have another sketch to work featuring twisted copper with silver nuggets. So watch this space . . .

The earrings in their raw polished copper form,
they’ve since been antiqued to match the pendant, see below.

14 Nov 2009

Copper loop in loop bracelet – part 2

Further to my earlier post about the thought process that gave rise to the copper loop in loop bracelet featured – I decided on a finished colour for it.

I oxidised it fully black initially – I get a good solid black on copper by heating the pieces in a bowl of just boiled water to get the metal nice and warm, then drop them into a warm solution of liver of sulphur – a task I relegate myself to the garden for as it pongs something wicked. When it appears to have taken on a good tone, I take it out and rinse it, give it a good rub on some kitchen paper and repeat the process.

A copper pendant that has been oxidised, then polished back
to give an antiqued finish.
Please click to see a larger version of all of the photographs.

Pieces to be oxidised must be really clean – my habit is to tumble them just beforehand with some warm soapy water and avoid touching them with my fingers – I’ve seen pieces with flat hammered sections not take the colour properly and leave a clearly visible fingerprint, just from picking it up – the oil in your skin is enough to create a resist area. Hence I feel the hot water bath also helps get any surface grease off too. If I don’t want to fire up the tumbler, I just give them a quick scrub with a baby toothbrush in hot soapy water.

One of my copper raindrops necklaces, antiqued.

Once I had the bracelet – and several other pieces – good and black I rinsed then washed them again with the toothbrush and washing up liquid – the oxidisation process tends to leave the surface rather sooty and I aim to get all the surface blackening off initially before I decide if the colour is good as it is, or it needs something else. In the case of the bracelet, I was delighted that the silver soldering (each of the 32 links and clasp is soldered) had taken the oxidising well – I’d chosen a harder solder for this reason and it worked well. Even after some polishing, it has remained less visible than I expected.

Darkly oxidised copper earrings which have been extensively
tumbled to give rise to a glossy gunmetal finish.

If the piece can withstand it, I tend to tumble again at this point as I really like the gunmetal finish this gives the post-oxidised metal. Some pieces are left like this, others get more attention. At this point, I extensively tumbled the bracelet before I decided on the final finish. I tumbled it until the outermost surfaces were just showing the copper through.

But I decided that it was rather too dark for the style, so manually polished the proud surfaces to settle on an antiqued finish instead. So this is the final version of it, heavily antiqued (more so than I typically do) and giving a good contrast between the internal and external aspects of the link structure.