Just Dropping In

I had insomnia (again) which resulted in some very early morning jewelry work. I have been buried with lots of other things to the detriment of exorcising jewelry projects but am exerting myself to make up for it, which has resulted in some long-awaited revamping of a couple of pieces. The first photo shows, among others, a larger “Heartbeat” drop that is now nickel-sized compared to its original 3/8″ diameter. Other changes are to the Texas Star earrings, seen in the second photo. The smallest pair is the original design (just under dime-sized); for another avenue of interest I added a band around the outside, and for the last pair the original is blown up to about an inch. The new windmill and swirl pieces will be part of a new piece (not telling here!), and I keep making Texas for one of our best sellers, the Alone Star State necklace.

The fired pieces in the photo above have a satiny sheen because they have been brass brushed right after firing. When silver clay is fired, the particles are not properly aligned to create a smooth and shiny surface. Pieces in unbrushed state can be tumbled or burnished, but with brushing the process speeds up considerably, and with a better result in my opinion.

This second photo shows unfired pieces ready to be put in the kiln. They are “green”– dry but unfired. The large domes have been placed on piles of plaster as a safeguard against flattening. I have always used art plaster for this purpose but there are other materials that work, too. You can barely see the little sterling silver earwire findings in the 2 pair on the left, which I point out for discussion below.

I included the last photo just to show my trusty 5-year-old kiln; it is a Paragon SC2. I usually try to load the kiln with many pieces, up to 2 layers, but these were the ones with sterling earwire findings embedded in them and they have to be fired at a temperature lower than 1470F, the melting point of silver. I torched and pickled the findings to bring a layer of fine silver to the surfaces, which protects the silver and allows it to be fired into the clay. Otherwise it can break afterward, and this happened to me before I learned to depletion gild–and the sterling broke after a couple of years! So it may look fine, but that isn’t something to trust.