Envy my anvil!

My grandfather was a blacksmith. I remember seeing him in his workshop, shaping red glowing iron on his anvil. Ding, ding, ding, dingdididing it said, as he hammered away. The “dingdididing” was the “cool off” blow he did on the anvil itself after 3 strokes on the item to be shaped. It had a very peculiar, forceful, yet almost meditative rhythm to it.

15 years ago my grandfather died and my parents couldn’t bear to part with this strong symbol of him, so they stored the anvil in their moist garage where it waited for better times while getting more and more rusty. Then a few months ago I realized, that I could really use and anvil and started searching for one online – until it struck me: Grandfathers anvil! Wonder if it’s still in my parents’ garage? It was. However, obviously iron and moisture aren’t the best of friends, and so it looked like this:

A closer look confirmed the ridiculous weight of it: 103,5 kilos!

I needed the anvil for my work, and so of cause needed a good surface to work on, so I had to start grinding. I’m okay with the rust – it tells a story, is the patina of this old tool, but I needed to create a workable surface. Hence I decided to grind away the rust entirely from the tip of the horn and a corner of the horizontal working area, lightly polish the rest of said working area and leave the rest of the anvil as I found it. It took two hours, a fairly sore back and humming nerve ends in my hands to just achieve that goal. I shudder to think of how much time it would have consumed to clean out the entire anvil!

And then it moved in – 103,5 kilos worth of anvil plus roughly half the weight for the old stub it rests on. It has most of its dents, caused by my Grandfathers blows, still visible and it’s shiny and new in some parts – ready to receive my own blows and dents and so mix his and my passion for shaping metal.

Thank you Grandfather. I will cherish your tool and use it to the best of my abilities!

Chaos before dawn

They say it’s got to be bad before it gets good. I believe that. Currently my studio-shop is in an utter state of chaos and it’s hard to keep faith that it will get well in the end.

However I do have faith and we are nearing said end. Glazed cabinets are almost done, I’m gilding the frames for them, which takes roughly 2 hours per piece and is a pain in the tush. All the glas shelves for the windows will arrive today or tomorrow and then I'll have to tackle my grandfathers anvil, which is extremely rusty-red at the moment. So… we’re getting there and I think apart from a few small things I'll be in place  by the end of this week. But boy there are many details that must fall into place! Don’t do this at home kids – or at least: have a good buffer of time, money and understanding and helpful friends.

Luckily I do and I consider myself blessed for it. By the 18th of June I will have to be done, because then I’m having an opening reception for anyone who wants to join, so the deadline is ticking…

A dream come true: my own studio!

For years I have been working in the boiler basement of our building when creating my jewelry. Not ideal, but a lot better than Nothing!

Then the brilliant jeweler Ossip Frolov gave me the opportunity to work for and with him for one month in his lovely shop in central Copenhagen.

What a change! I have enjoyed it a lot and learned more. Now that my internship ends, I don’t feel I can go back to my basement-boiler-workshop. I need to move on! With a new company, homepage and brand identity, I need to move forward, and so I searched for new premises to work and sell my art.

And I found it!

Between the Kings Garden, encircling the castle Rosenburg, and Nyboder – the low and very cute housings build by the king for his seamen in the 1600, you find a very nice and calm area of Copenhagen. Surrounded by the National museum of art and the royal castle Amalienburg, this is a living area for those who like to live in the historical part of the city – in walking distance of the bustling shopping life.

In Sankt Pauls Gade 72 I have obtained a studio within a workshop commune of four other women – a ceramic artist, a sculptor and two other jewelers. It’s an old basement shop and I have two windows, flanking a mailbox. Considering that this is not a shopping street, that mailbox might end up giving my jewelry quite a bit of attention – or so I hope.

I have great plans for this place, which will be a combined studio and shop. However, as the before pictures show, it takes a lot of work! The room was formerly inhibited by a painter who painted large pictures leaning against the walls – and it surely shows!

 

(The lovely lady with the impressive curly hair is Hanne Bertelsen, who is the ceramics artist owning the shop) But I’m not intimidated and with the help of my good friend Michael, I ventured into turning the rainbow-room into a calm, white base for my own colors.

And here we are, halfway through the painting process with the walls more or less white (another coat is definitely coming up!) I’m not meticulous, not aiming for smooth perfect results. Actually I like the coarseness of the surfaces, but I want at least the color to be uniform.

The floors are splattered with colors too, so I need to do something. I’ll probably end up painting them green (yup – still my fav color!)

Lots of work still to be done, but once that is over, I hope for the room to look something like this:

One large table will function as both my working surface and counter. The closed door at the end of the room will be turned into a vitrine with build-in lights and the wall next to the door will hold another set of vitrines. I have inherited an anvil from my grand father who was a black smith and will of cause use it in my studio. Also my friend Rikke lets me borrow a beautiful old mannequin and it will look stunning!

La piece de resistance is one of the windowsills opposite my bench, where I’m planning a cushioned seat for my visitors.

Imagine working and cosily chatting with your customer or friends! This is what I do as I search for vendors to sell me glass shelves, vitrine doors and thick wooden tabletops. It's a thrilling experience and I’ll keep you posted on the development!

What to do with a large cabochon?

Some time ago I picked up this lovely cabochon – it was green with a number of nuances and sold by someone who didn’t have a clue as to what it was. My guess is moss agate but to be honest: I don’t know. What I do know is that I love the stone and so it was time to give it a nice setting.

Now, the obvious choice is to create a bezel setting on a sheet of silver and then perhaps add some adornments. A lot of very successful artists do that, amongst these Jamie from Bella Bijou Jewelry and Tess from Nova of Sweden. It’s a good choice because it sets the stone securely, allows for a lot of play and is still comfortable to wear. So I set out to play –my own style obviously ;-)

First a few drawings, realizing that I preferred the stone to be placed diagonally on the finger to allow for a more smooth and logical attachment of the decorations. I dug through a lot of stones and decided to go for contrast: orange and yellow sapphires. 

I created the bezel from fine silver (just easier to push over the stone when finished) and soldered it onto the sheet – and made a mistake when trying out the fit of the stone. TRICK: when doing that, place some dental floss under the stone in order to easily lift it out again! I didn’t and so my stone was stuck! It of cause meant that I had created a perfect bezel setting but still… So I went boldly ahead and drilled a hole in the back of the sheet, holding the whole thing in a small vice (with air below, enabling the stone to move away from the drill). Of cause I created a small spot on the stone! However, I decided to go ahead and create, what I had wanted to do from the beginning: and elaborate backside. By turning the stone around 180 degrees, I hid the small spot I had created with the drill. I love backsides, insides and hidden sides to be decorated – just for the owner to know and admire. It’s your own little portable secret. A little part of the pattern that I sawed out, I re-attached in a different spot, creating a bit of depth in the design.

Meanwhile I had decided against the contrasting colors. Staying within one general group of colors allows the wearer a bit more room when choosing outfit and accessories, so I went with green peridots and white sapphires instead. 

Then it was time for the inevitable curl (hey, it’s me! Read this article on the topic)  and start arranging the settings for the stones in order to solder them on. 

Eventually, I ditched the last tube setting, soldered it all together, sawed off the excess sheet, filed and sanded and added 3 golden balls for just a bit of warmth to contrast the cool green. Then I attached the ring shank and worked a bit off LOS into the small crevices that would become dark eventually in any case. Besides: it brings out the details a lot better! After even more buffing and polishing, I set the center stone and was ready to set the small ones

And here is the end result:

It’s big and of cause has a certain weight to it, but I don’t find it overwhelming. The tilted placement of the stone on the hand lightens the overall design. It’s gonna be hard to part with this baby!

The wedding ring that was pimped into freedom

 My cousin is getting divorced.

She therefore has a surplus wedding band –made of 14 carat gold that she wanted me to change into a completely different non-marriage related one. A very simple and modern thing, with sharp edges and which used to hold a diamond. She lost that a while ago, so what I held in my hands, was the band itself with some kind of crevice across, where the diamond used to be fit. I realize, that I should have taken a before picture, so i can't show you that –doh! But it looked something like this one, though of cause with the crevice described above.

So, what to do? I decided to change it completely and started by filing off the edges, leaving the ring with a smooth curve, but now with structure. It was interesting to observe, how the apr. 3 mm wide band suddenly looked a lot thicker because of the edges being gone. Talk about some kind of optical illusion, changing the general look of the ring radically.

Then I cut the crevice a little wider and rounded, pushed the ring shank a little bit closer (very tough with 14 carat gold) and fitted a piece of thick-walled silver tube for a new setting.

I cut the seat for the black 3 mm sapphire that I had chosen for her instead of the lost diamond and filed the walls thin enough to be pushed over the stone.

Okay – she asked me to change it, and so I of cause changed it into something typical for me. In other words: It needed a curl! Fitting such a curl 3 dimensionally is a fiddly hassle, but I’m still loving it and so, here I’m ready to solder a silver curl on.

Of cause the name and date had to go, so off they went, but in spite of having pushed the ring shank a tad closer, I was afraid that the ring had gotten too big. Hence I added my stamp on a 0,3 mm sheet of silver, instead of stamping directly. I left the original makers stamp and the value (585)

And here is the end result:

She was luckily thrilled, very surprised at how different from the original it turned out and, this is the most wonderful part, loved how I had managed to capture her essence in it. She is right. This ring is much more how I see my beautiful cousin than the one she originally handed to me. This ring more than anything illustrates how wonderful her life is turning, now that it isn't a wedding ring anymore.
To freedom and future! :-)

A stubborn heart

Valentines is just around the corner and I’m creating jewelry with hearts – of cause. I have made a number of dainty little beauties which are neat, but I got the urge to create something bigger and a tad different. I love jewelry with details on the back or other little secrets that only the bearer knows of. And so I set out to create a locket-style necklace –or rather a kind of silver folder, which means HINGE. It’s been a few years since I made a locket and it’s difficult – you easily end up soldering everything together. However, I had chosen a simplified way of hinging the thing and arrogantly thought that it would be a walk in the park. Little did I know, that I was to embark on hours and hours of frustration where everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

But first I created the bezel for the garnet cap, sawed out the front heart and the back and the pieces of tubing I needed for the hinge. I was planning on letting the hinge double as a bezel, creating a fairly simple design.

And then onto soldering………………………….. it all together :-(

Looks neat, right? What you don’t see is that all parts are very much sticking together, not letting anything move whatsoever! I swore loudly and trampled around the workshop before sitting down and unsoldering it. I hate unsoldering. It’s messy, much more cleanup-time and just not very satisfying. It all stuck because I didn’t use any kind of block. I could also have used another cool technique which one of my fellow Etsyans advised me of using hard solder to JUST forming a ball, then carefully taking it apart and soldering it with medium solder, not allowing the hard one to melt too, but to allow it to keep everything in place.

So, what now? Well, I soldered the middle part of the hinge back onto the back part (cleanup) and though that I could just use this part as a guide when placing the tubes of the upper part and then remove the back part when the flux had crystallized and was holding things in place. So though, so I did and here is the result:

OF CAUSE it doesn’t fit! The tubes are flush with the base they have been soldered on –which is too “high” Doh! More swearing and trampling –actually I gave up that day. Next day I braced myself and thought “I’d be damned if this piece will have me –I’ll show it who’s in charge” and came up with another solution: I found a piece of copper of the same thickness as the back plate silver sheet and slipped it under the front heart –staying far away from the hinge parts of cause. Again using the back part as a guide, I now succeeded in soldering the tubes on in the position they ought to have. See!

And the hinge works!

Now for a LOOOOONG time of cleanup and sanding –and then more sanding when it turned out that I had of cause created fire scale during the battle – and then finally for the decoration. I wanted a few words of love on the inside, for the bearer only to know, and a scrollwork decoration on the outer layer, plus a little 14 carat golden heart that I had sawed out and domed. Here you see how I again used the copper sheet to stabilize IF the hinges would in any way think of moving while I was soldering on the heart.

Final cleanup, then LOS and a finishing polish and I was ready to set the cab and string it to the burgundry leather cord. And here it is –tadaaaaaa!

It was a struggle, but I am actually quite satisfied with the outcome! Now I guess I should be creating another little folder while I remember how ;-)

My workshop

I think it's time I show you my workshop -the place I create my jewelry. Now, since I do the "real" stuff and not only assemble pre-made parts into pretty pieces, but actually saw, file, solder, etch, polish etc, it's a noisy and dirty business. In other words: not a thing to do at the dining table in my Nørrebro-flat. Luckily, I got the permission to occupy a corner of the boiler room in the basement of my building. It might not be charming, but it holds the 3 essentials: warmth, running water and electricity. A flask of gas hidden under the table (inherited from my father and horribly molested with a jigsaw to fit my needs) provides the fire and I’m dancing –well… not entirely literally. The room has been painted in a cheerful yellow, which is nice, given the limited amount of light. It’s my own little piece of heaven.

I have collected quite a lot of tools by now, neatly stored in the drawers, and absolutely necessary in order to shape the metal how I want it. Quite often I have to invent ways to achieve the specific shape I am looking for, and equally often the finished item ends up looking somewhat different from the original drawing, as you can see in this example, featuring two of my favorite brooches. Yes, the smiling face (which you can by here)was initially intended to be a pendant!

My next purchase will be a tumbler, which both polishes and hardens the finished jewelry. This is especially necessary when creating earrings like these airy silver-wire ones, which have been shaped out of 1,2 mm wide wire. This time I hardened them in the oven, but I feel quite bad for using that much CO2 (they have to stay in there at maximum temperature for one whole hour). So: If I get my way, I’ll have a tumbler next month and a lot more wire-earrings coming up, like the ones I drew yesterday at the never-ending parent meeting in the kinder garden. Can’t wait!