Drawing in the countryside

I just came home from a few days of vacation on the lovely island Fur in the northern part of Denmark. Danish countryside means agriculture and a few forests plus a lot of coastline and beaches. It’s an old country and hence many buildings are rather old too. – A lovely feature when you want to relax a bit by drawing.

We had set out, the entire family (myself, my 6 year old daughter and my parents) to find a good spot for drawing and ended up at an old farm. It’s a traditional square with a yard covered by cobbled stones and a large tree in the middle (a “protection tree”). Originally it was constructed in 1600-and-something, which shows by the wooden structure of the gate – later the roof of this part was covered with sheet metal unlike the main living part which is thatched like our summerhouse:

Okay, back to the farm. Grandfather, mother and daughter sat down and started drawing the same motif – the gate leading into the farm. The result was quite stunning. We were sitting a bit apart, and so the angel to the motif was slightly different, but it’s quite clear that we drew (or in my father case: painted) the same motif. Each of us chose different features to bring into the picture. Johanne of cause drew the swing and the weather vane, while I was concentrating on the inner woodwork of the gate. My father painted the building in its surroundings.

This is the first time that we had Johanne out on one of our traditional vacation-drawing trips and she loved it, working very concentrated. Not the last time I take her, she has a real talent to be nurtured!

To me it was just nice to draw something else than jewelry for a change and I think necessary in order to keep your drawing skills intact. Maybe I should draw a few more humans again – perhaps even coquis? It’s been a few years and that is one of the best drawing exercises available!

Devilish wrapping rings turning heavenly beautiful

Two customers came to me. They were friends and had been to Sri Lanka together. There, they had bought a number of beautiful faceted stones and now they wanted them set in each their wrapping ring. One had seven stones and wanted them set in a wrapping ring made of 14 carat gold, the other had five stones and a redundant wedding ring of 14 carat gold that she wanted incorporated, but the rest made of silver.

We had a long chat and made a number of drawings. They wanted wrapping rings, but not identical rings and actually had each their style. The one with the seven stones wanted a curved design, possibly with some balls too, while the one with the five stones wanted a more minimalistic and simple design.

Very well – I started working. It took quite a while to create all those settings – most of them were slightly irregular, and so nothing premade could be used at all. Then I removed the writing from the inside of the wedding ring, cut it open and milled it a bit thinner before closing it to a ring again – now absolutely plain and simple.

Creating a wrapping ring is principally very simple. You take a length of wire (I find 1,3 mm the best gauge), wrap it around a ring mandrel where you know it would fit, and solder it all together. However, it’s of cause not that simple. Thing is, it has to be wrapped in a way, that leaves no crossings of the wire at the sides of the ring, which would be very annoying when worn. And then of cause you need to wrap it in a way that can accommodate all the settings you are planning for. The more stones, the more complicated. Needless to say, that the one with the seven stones presented quite a challenge! 14 carat gold is also not that easy to work with. Yes, pure gold is very soft, but 14 carat gold is half copper/silver and other metals, which makes the alloy a lot harder to work than sterling silver. A lot of swearing words were heard in my studio while manipulating (and annealing) the wire until I was satisfied.

Then I asked my customers in for a fitting. Not only was it important to find out if the ring actually fit. If you create a wide wrapping ring, it very much depends on how the finger is created. Me, I have what appears as moderately slender fingers, but they are rather fleshy at the base. That means that a wide band very quickly feels too small, even though it has the “right” size. My customers however, did not have that issue, and so the rings fit – phew! Then we started playing around with the settings. I had of cause a suggestion, but we ended moving the stones around quite a lot before we were all satisfied. I took pictures to remember for my further work:

Actually, I ended up changing the settings of the golden ring once again, but that is how it is – when you work with it, you often find out that another solution is the better one. Luckily my customer and I agreed on a new version.

Assembling the silver/gold ring version was fairly easy. With “only” five settings we were on friendly terms.

The big golden ring with the seven settings however, was a stubborn lady and I soldered, re-soldered and then again eight times before I was satisfied, all the settings and all the balls were in place. Setting the stones of cause also was a challenge, due to the hard-alloy-issue, but I propped the ring on my mandrel, fixated it in the vice and used a punch and hammer to tap the settings over the stones.

Once I was done renovating and polishing I leaned back and looked at them. I might have been very annoyed at a point or two in that process, but I must say… the result was absolutely stunning! The silver/gold version was elegant, colorful and absolutely perfect for my customer. The golden was sumptuous like an Indian Bollywood movie, very feminine and alive with all the balls carefully placed to balance the stones in order to create a overall harmonic design. “Wow” I though “just… wow!” -and ended the day being rather proud of my work.

New toys!

I’m currently stocking up on a lot of tools that I have been missing for a while. The list is long and I buy them as I get the money, but this morning I had a shipment from the UK. Mmmmm.... the smell of a fresh tool shipment in the morning...

 Inside was a collection of tools that I had long needed: Long tweezers (so nice not to burn your fingertips when you work with tweers while soldering), a tiny hammer (to harden open jump rings after montage), tools for wax carving (I have the wax and the ideas now I just need the time...) a new burnisher (where did my old one go?!) and most importantly: bezel mandrels in a number of different shapes.

Granted, I’m not sure how to exactly work with some of them – especially the star shaped one eludes me. Any ideas? However, I got them a lot cheaper than if I should have bought them here in Denmark (alle nine for the price of 2 bough at my local vendor) and hence rush to recommend the eBay shop: Jewellers-Tools

Now off to the workshop where I’m working on a number of projects with flowers. Here is a teaser ;-)

A room of ones own

So I got myself a new studio - a bare and hampered room to be changed into something completely else. Given the fact that I have worked in a number of different places, but never really able to make it MY space, I was yearning for a room, that would be the essence of me. -My cave where my inspiration could flow freely and undisturbed, build itself up to the crescendo of new designs and new beauty. Therefore, the aesthetics of the room that was to be my new studio/shop was very important to me.

I chose to create a calm canvas of white and green, adding wood, black and gold to the cocktail. The result is quite stunning if I may say so myself. I have been working hard for one month, dedicating literally every wake hour to this project.  My home looks like a wasteland, I have no more visible horizontal surfaces there, the laundry basked hasn’t been able to be closed for weeks and my kid hasn’t had the most nutritious and well-prepared meals etc. But I have made a year-long dream come true: I have my own studio shop!

I went from this:

To this:

Now it’s finally time to create all the long-time-due custom orders (sorry and thank you for being so patient!) and turn all those ideas that have been massing in my mind and sketch books into reality. Oh bliss!

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!

It aint gold, but boy it glitters!

I’ve been babbling about all the frames for the glazed cabinets which I’m gilding and decided to show you what I’m talking about. I bought old picture frames with glass, which had a somewhat golden look, and also used some “raw” wooden frames, which I coated with a red base. The red brings out the warmth of the gold even more and it looks stunning, don’t you think?

And here’s a disclaimer: No, it’s not real gold – that would ruin me completely! It’s fake – actually highly shiny brass. However, it looks and acts the part, meaning that it’s massively annoying, flies everywhere, takes forever to apply etc. But it’s worth it in my opinion. Check out this fun video on an artist trying to demonstrate how to handle gold leaf – and failing miserably *chuckle*




What I do? I first brush the whole item with the gold leaf adhesive, which has to set for 30 min before you can start gilding. After that it remains sticky for days – very handy! Using a pair of tweezers I pull suitable pieces from the sheet which is 16x16 cm big –much larger than normal gold leaf, which is usually 8x8 or even smaller. Then I use a soft brush, which I turn static on my own hair to pick up and place the leaf on the surface. A quick brush and it’s set!

Once I’ll have all frames gilded, they need to be varnished. Had it been gold, they wouldn’t change at all, but since it’s brass, it will oxidize and turn dull and eventually green over time. Can’t have that, so on with the laquer!

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…