They Call Me Mellow Niello - Wildacres, 2019

Another summer is almost over and I'm happy to say that I was able to take Gia's class at Wildacres in June.  The Florida Society of Goldsmiths puts this on every year and they do an AMAZING job!  This time I learned a technique called "Niello."  Niello is a black metallic alloy used as a surface decoration and is fused to a metal base.  We made designs in sterling silver using engraving tools (and sometimes burrs), making designs in the silver. Once finished we filled the spaces with the Niello substance and fired.  Once cool, we then sanded until the designs surfaced. 

Such a great class!  That's Fred the Deadhead in Cyndi's hand.  She snuck him into Meike's bed when Meike was off doing something else in hopes of freaking her out when she walked back into her room.  

Personally, I would have screamed...loudly...if I came upon THIS in my room, but Meike is on to Cyndi's shenanigans.  LOL!

Always a joy to come back to this beautiful view again. 

Below you see us outside watching Gia make the Niello.  He's firing silver, copper, lead and ground sulfur.  Some of us came prepared for this with our heavy-duty respirator masks.  If you are downwind from the smell of these chemicals while they're being fired, it's not going to be a good thing.  The lead and sulfur are highly toxic.

Me & Meike

Here is the beginning of a piece.  This was the first time I'd ever used engraving tools for ANYTHING, so my work is messy.  But by the end of the week, I had a better feel for this process.

When the piece was finished with the design work, I added the black, powdered Niello and fired.  This is how it looks once fired.  Then I went to the sanding machine and took off most of the Niello there, and finished with a regular file.

Here's how it looked when almost finished.  Just a little more sanding and polishing to do.

This is Gia's finished pendant along with the bracelet he made in class.

I was the lucky purchaser of this bracelet at the auction!  Sooooo happy to have this.  It's gorgeous.

Fred liked to be with us every day in our studio. 

This is a sterling silver pendant that I had etched at home and brought with me to Wildacres. I filled it with Neillo, fired, then sanded and polished.  It came out pretty good.  I was surprised how much detail there was.  Another person in the class brought some Metal Clay pieces she had made and they also came out great filled with Niello.

Another beautiful sky, another wonderful week in North Carolina.  

There is a sign entering Wildacres that says, "You are now leaving the real world."  At the end of the week as you begin to drive home, the sign says, "You are now entering the real world."  I can't tell you how true those words are, but everyone who goes to Wildacres for a week knows what I'm talking about.

2012 Wildacres Trip

Another week up in Little Switzerland has come and gone.  I returned on Saturday, tired (as usual), but happy for having had another great week at Wildacres.  This year I took an enameling class with Pat Nelson.  I wasn't sure what to expect from this class called 2D and 3D enameling, and we ended up learning a vast array of different enameling techniques.

We started off using stencils to make designs, and later moved to using Riso Screens and Thermal Fax machines (something I had never heard of).  

 Things got MESSY!  We experimented with foils, drawing with graphite, using watercolor enamels and ceramic pencils.  We played with decals and even learned how to make our own with black and white laser copiers.  We also learned how to make our own stencils using silkscreening techniques.  Phew!  It's a good thing I take good notes because I can't remember half of what Pat taught us and I've only been home 2 days.

Karen and Alan (this was Karen's first year, and she'll definitely be back).

.

Then came Auction Night!  First we have a silent auction followed by the live auction where the "special" items donated by all the teachers are auctioned off.  Charlene won a gorgeous necklace made by our one of our most favorite teachers of all time, Julia Woodman.  : )

 
Here is Susan on the left, who taught me all my basic metalsmithing skills at Spruill, Charlene, Me and Cyndi, with Tom Beard, another teacher at Spruill sitting in front.  Good times!




 Susan and Cyndi, who decided we all needed to be fed one night while sitting out on the patio and brought out different types of cheese, crackers and dips.  Amazingly yummy.

Here are a few of the experiments we did in class, and here is Katherine and Pat up above.

Practicing "the pose" before dinner one evening (shoulder out, head forward and slightly down). 

Mary Ann Scherr (second on left) taught a class that used etching materials and also worked with the student's own body to form the metal to their personal shape.  They turned out some amazing pieces.  Here are some examples.

Some more examples from our enameling class:

Harold O'Connor was also at Wildacres this year and here are a few items his students produced.

We also had a Lapidary class taught by Helen Driggs, an Engraving class by Les Bryant and Andrea Kennington and a stone setting class by Hiriko Yamada. Everyone produced extraordinary pieces and I wish I could include them ALL here.

I will end by saying I missed a few special people this year who have been up at at Wildacres with me now for 5 years - Julia, Kathy and Maggie especially!  I hope they find a way to make it back up next summer.  Of course, we all missed Jean Stark who decided 2011 would be her last, and John Cogswell's absence was also felt.  And where were Leslie, Gail and Robert (we missed his home-made honey!)  I hope they all know that there were a lot of people who asked about them.

Quack, Quack, I was taking a bath...

 

We woke up on Easter Sunday to 16 baby ducks swimming in our pool with their mother.  She had been nesting under a bush in the back yard for about 3 to 4 weeks, so even though we knew the big day was coming soon, we were still surprised.  And so many of them!  This was the third year in a row that she has come to nest in our yard.  She arrives with her partner a couple of weeks prior to settling down and they can be found swimming in the pool in the early mornings.   They usually wake us up with their loud quacking and splashing about.

The mother ran out of the yard with about 6 little ones as soon as we could get them out of the pool, leaving us to fend for the others who seemed a little panicked that their mother had left them.  We were able to coax the rest of them out of the pool on a blue swim mat.  They headed to the fence, but couldn't get through, so I had to scoop them up with my hands and put them through the opening.  Mommy Duck was out there waiting for them, quacking away.  Off they waddled, single file, into the big pond in the woods.  It was an exciting Easter morning to say the least.

I've been working on forging recently.  I made these earrings from a solid piece of 8 gauge square wire (round wire would be fine, too).  After forging the ends, I ran them through the rolling mill, bringing them down thinner and thinner until they were thin enough to develop into ear wires, which I finished off with an Artifex wheel.  The entire piece was then cut in half and the earring was then made by forging a triangular design and finishing off with filing or a coarse wheel.  I shined them up by putting them in the tumbler.  Each earring is all one piece with no soldering at all.   (This technique was recently taught in one of John Cogswell's classes here in Atlanta, and he is such a master I would guess he makes the entire earring with a hammer and a file.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the class, so did what worked best for me.)

Etching with Carol Webb

In the beginning of November, Carol Webb arrived in Atlanta to give us an excellent, information packed three-day workshop on etching.  Here are a couple of Carol's finished pieces (copper and silver laminate) in case you aren't familiar with her work:

We started off by transferring our black and white designs onto blue PnP paper, which we then transferred onto copper (with heat from a warming tray).  Our first assignment was to completely etch through the metal.   

Here's Carol doing a little annealing:

We then layed our plates face down in a batch of etching solution and checked them every ten minutes or so until the design had etched all the way through.  You can see in the photo below where the etchant is cutting right through the metal.  

Here are examples of student experiments showing how the black sections of the design will stay copper while the white will be removed.  I can't tell you how many times we mixed this up.

We also did some heavy duty etching in this spray etcher.  It was amazing how deep the etchings were in a fraction of the time.  This technique is perfect for using etched brass plates to transfer onto sterling silver through a rolling mill.

The major reason I took this class was to learn how to make and etch copper and silver laminate (bi-metal).  To accomplish this, we started with sterling or fine silver sheet (20 to 12 ga), along with a sheet of copper (26 to 24 ga) and heated it until a eutectic bond was formed, which can take some time.  Often it takes more than one attempt with the torch.  We then rolled the bi-metal down to the gauge we needed for our project.  At this point, we simply followed the previous exercises in etching to get the results desired.  Carol also showed us how to use different patinas to cause a striking contrast between the silver and the copper (see first picture above).


We somehow managed to do all of this in three days!  It was an amazing amount of information to to cover in such a short time, but Carol was organized and kept us all on task throughout the entire class.   She gave excellent instructions and handouts to help us along, plus provided us with pages and pages of designs to use in our projects.  I learned so much my head was spinning...and that's the way I like it.  

Hammering In My Head

Another week at Wildacres up in Little Switzerland. North Carolina has come and gone again. This was my third visit and it is now right up there as one of my most favorite weeks of the year. Betty Helen Longhi was my instructor and we not only hammered ourselves silly, we bought every conceivable hammer and stake we will ever need for the rest of our lives (ya, right).

Here are some of the forms we made while learning how to hammer metal into different forms and shapes using anticlastic raising, synclastic forming, sinusodial stakes and mandrels. It'll take plenty of practice to become proficient at this particular skill. Betty made it all look easy, of course.

There were classes in chainmaking (Jean Stark), making miniature teapots (John Cogswell), blacksmithing (Zach Noble), Bi Metal (Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez), and finding one's individual style (Charles Pinckney). Below are Maggie, Jean & Julia, three women who inspire me with their wisdom, joy of life and vibrant, positive attitudes.

Here we are working in Betty Helen's class. We would work from 9:00 am until 6:30 pm. Some nights we would come back after dinner and work some more.


And talk about fun! Oh my gosh, we had had so much fun. Can you read Donnie's T-shirt? It says, "Midnight Plumber: Will work for M&M's." There is a long story behind this involving Maggie, a broken shower at midnight and Donnie to the rescue.


Part of the "Spruill Gang" below. We've all been taking classes at Spruill for a few years, and Tom is an instructor. One of the best parts of metalsmithing/jewelry making are the friends one makes along the way.

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.