Golden Gaze

Harold O'Connor (www.haroldoconnor.com) came to town last week to teach three worshops, and I was fortunate enough to be in two of them: Surface Embellishments and Unconventional Stone setting.


We learned about reticulating sterling silver, forming and folding metal, laminating copper to silver, laminating gold to silver, plus a demonstration on granulation.

In the stone setting workshop we watched Harold make sterling silver cable, a silver cone shaped piece that was then attached to a small stone by pegs and wire, how to use a tap and die set, and how to make a slide mount (among other things).

Here's Charlene working on reticulation:

And this is Amy, obviously enjoying herself:

Harold brought a few of his works to show us. Here are a couple of my favorites:

It was an excellent workshop. I learned so many new skills that my head is still spinning! I especially enjoyed learning how he reticulates silver and how to fuse gold to silver.

Here is the piece I finished a couple of days ago, inspired by Harold's workshop:

It is made of sterling silver, reticulated silver, granulation, and 22k gold fused to silver. It was then oxidized with liver of sulphur, which gave it all those wonderful colors.