As you know, I’ve been taking a jewelry class at a local art center. Yesterday was the last class of this session. I’ll show you and tell you what happened.

I have small box of bits and pieces I’ve collected over the weeks. Surely something could be done with some of them, I thought.

And, we had our back door replaced this last week, making its keys useless. It turned out we had quite a few keys for this one door. I decided take them into class, too.

By this time, I feel more at home in the jewelry studio. While having very little skill, if any, at most processes, I have an idea of how things work. It’s important to remember this fact when you start a new topic in life: it takes time to become familiar with the landscape, what’s in it, what’s not, and how the parts interact. You can’t get down to details until you have a map of what’s out there.

All right. I got out my keys and the instructor and I talked things over. One idea (quite practical, if not jewelry making exactly) is that you can use the punch machine (sorry, but I don’t know its name!) to punch out a hole in your key, so that you can find it by feel in the dark. Yes, I agree, I can think of times that would have been helpful.

Punching out holes is right up my alley. I got to work on one key, punched holes, and then sent it through the rolling mill for good measure:

I set it aside. It will tell me what to do next when it is ready.

We took another key, twisted it in a vise. The shaft did a nice turn but part of the head snapped off. All right. I then took a hammered copper wire spiral and one of the punchouts from the first key and after some soldering, polishing, and filing, here is this uncategorized object:

Once again, I don’t quite know what will come next. But there is a lot I like about it now. The twist in the shaft, for instance. And the brass dot at the bottom. I think as far as the spiral, I would not wrap it as tightly the next time and let more “air” into it.  But…if nothing else, this item is pleasantly heavy and smooth to hold in your hand.

Next, I moved on to something I’d been thinking about ever since I made this guy at the beginning of the sessions:

It’s a piece of brass and I sawed out the nose and mouth. Remember my feelings about the saw? I can see, now that I have more experience, that it is useful to know how to saw, and I would profit by trying it again. I do like the shapes it made.

All right. Here’s what I did. I cut off the bottom section. I took some spirals I had made from copper wire and soldered them on to make eyes. Yes, I used the torch. I’m feeling less afraid of it. Familiarity is not breeding contempt, no, I will always be respectful of it, but maybe I can lose my fear of it.

Anyway, here is the result.

 

Funny-looking guy, right? But I’m thrilled. We polished him up and I like the brass/copper finish he has now. I am not happy with the eye on the left (as you look at him). I now see that I should have chosen spirals with a similar opening in the middle of the spiral. The center needed to be darker, I thought.

So, the instructor mixed up some liver of sulfur, a substance that oxidizes metals and darkens them. You dunk the item in and when it is dark enough for you, you wash it off. I carefully painted in the middle of the eye to darken just that section.

I liked it better. But I am thinking it needs more. Possibly a dark small bead-like object (think the tiny brass button at the end of the key thing I showed you earlier, only dark). Eyes don’t have to match but they need to go together.

Plus, how about some hair or something for this guy? No, he’s not finished yet.

Well, that was enough for this one day. I have accumulated more wire bent into shapes and hammered:

As I’ve said over and over, I could hammer all day. I love the effect of flattening wire and I love creating textures in metal. And I just like hammering.

Let me show you one more thing, this small piece of copper that got liver of sulfured by me in one of those “let’s see what happens” moments. Here’s the back with some L of S seeping over:

Here is the other side, given the full treatment:

and a close up:

The subtlety and array of colors really appeals to me.

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The sessions are over and I reflect on what the experience has brought me. I now have a picture in my mind of how jewelry gets made. I have worked with tools, raw materials, and equipment to put together some items and in doing so I’ve begun to understand the properties and behaviors of all these things.

I feel now that I have an idea of what interests me in this line of art-making. It’s not making jewelry as such, which I guess is kind of strange when what I’ve been doing is taking a jewelry class! But to me, it’s the making of small objects out of metal that is attractive – whether a person could wear them or not. I am fortunate that the instructor was open to this way of thinking and encouraged exploration.

I also like the small scale of the metalworking we did – the tiny details of the stamps, the gradations of color in the metals – the idea of making small artworks that you could hold in your hand and examine is intriguing.

Last but not least, it was fun. Thank you to the instructor and my fellow students who made this possible.

All right. I have a feeling my adventures in metal work are not over. We’ll see what happens!