Pod Story

I'd like to introduce you to the Pod pendant. It's a new addition to my Etsy store and the story of its creation is quite a saga. It all started when I was browsing the PMCSupply.com website and found this stuff called Hattie's Bloom Mesh. It said that you could push a ball of pmc through it and fire it with the mesh in place to make these sort of bud-like protrusions. Always a sucker for a new product, I bought some and tried it out on two balls of pmc. The product worked as promised and now I had two lumps of silver protrusions.

What to do with them? I played around with them for days and they never seemed to fit anywhere. I decided that I should try to create a pmc base for the smaller lump. I put it on a flat oval pmc base -- again, the problem was how to make the two look like they belonged together. I added small balls of pmc, slightly smushed and then squeezed in a bezel cup. The result still looked incomplete, even after I set an iolite cabochon in the bezel cup. There were a couple of bare places in the lump that bothered me, so I glued in a Swarovski crystal (at the bottom) and the ends of some oxidized silver head pins (in the middle of the lump). Why did I glue instead of solder? I was in the "I can't make anything stick together with solder" phase and was sick of trying. Also, I had just used a dab of epoxy on the base of the cabochon, so the glue was handy.

Next phase in the life of the pod: I pried the crystal off and drilled a hole in the bottom, thinking I would dangle a pearl. Awful. After a few more days I thought, "It looks like the inside of something. It needs an outside." So I added the wire coil, which has its ends secured through the two drilled holes. Better! Then I decided to add a curved piece of heavy square wire to the other side to balance the coil. This time, I thought, I'm going to solder the sucker on.

With great care, I prepared the surface of the pod and the wire. With even more care, I used my two-clamp third hand to position the wire and pod tight against each other. I started up my little butane torch and very carefully started warming the metal around the pieces of solder. Suddenly the pod was engulfed in three inch high flames! I jumped back. I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed that olympic quality backward leap. I wondered if I should grab the fire extinguisher. By that time the flames had died down. The solder was gone, the clamps on the third hand were discolored, and the pod, oh my, the pod was black wherever the epoxy (the cause of the conflagration) had been. Not a nice patinated oxidized black, a greasy looking permanent horrible-looking black. And worst of all, the iolite was completely black.

After a suitable period of mourning had passed, I decided that soldering the wire onto the pod was still a good exercise, so I set it up again. This time I turned the pod upside down in the third hand, thinking it would let me see what was happening with the solder more clearly. I set everything up and applied the torch from underneath. After several tries the pod and wire remained unattached, so I decided it was time to call it a day. I took the pod out of the clamps and, lo and behold!, the nasty black gunk was all gone and the iolite was purple again. What heat taketh away, heat also giveth back. I decided it was a sign that the pod was just fine without any additional wire on the side and oxidized it on the spot.

There ends the story of the pod.

Is it weird enough yet?

A few days ago I posted a picture of a pendant in progress and said that I didn't think it was weird enough. It's now finished and it's definitely weird enough. The question is whether, in the search for belle-laide, I've gone over into totally damn laide. In defense of the pendant, I have to say that this is not a great photo. The color of the pearls is washed out - they're a much more vibrant greenish-purple. I guess that's not actually in defense of the pendant but of the pearls. But the pearls are quite important to the beauty of the pendant, such as it is. (The more I write the more defensive I sound. Not good.) I was debating whether to put it on an oxidized chain or a rubber cord and my partner said it had to be the chain, because the pendant needed to be seen as being worthy of a beautiful chain. Because it's so weird. And ugly. I agree that it needs a chain, a nice substantial one, not for beauty PR purposes but because of the pearls, which seem slightly too formal for a rubber cord.

The pendant still doesn't have a name -- to myself I call it "the weird organic thing" (hereafter, WOT). Last night I suddenly remembered a novel by Samuel Delany called Dhalgren. It's an amazing book - not my favorite of his, but amazing. Set in some kind of post-apocalyptic time, the main character is a semi-amnesiac poet with one shoe. Early in the book he's given a bracelet shaped like a flower, except that the petals are blades, so it's really a weapon. It's called a brass orchid and, later, that's what he names his book of poetry. (Great way to think of poetry, right? Something beautiful that, when wielded well, cuts deep.) I couldn't remember the name of the thing but when I remembered its existence I thought it would be perfect to give the WOT the name of the bracelet/weapon. The petals on the WOT are pretty sharp and pointy and, though it doesn't look the way I had imagined the brass orchid would look, it does have some of that post-apocalyptic dystopian thing going on.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can call the WOT "Brass Orchid". First, it's not made of brass and I don't want people to get the wrong idea. Second, it doesn't look much like an orchid. Third, the description of the brass orchid, which admittedly doesn't make it sound like it looks much like an orchid either, doesn't sound anything like the WOT. The second and third things don't actually bother me that much. Mainly I don't want to have to write a description explaining why I'm calling this thing a brass orchid when it isn't brass. Seems counterproductive.

Not to worry. I can't post the WOT until a shipment of chain arrives so I've got some time to think of another name.

Paris Mystery pendant

This piece recently sold, so I'm "archiving" the description here.
----------------------
My first trip to Paris - I couldn't believe I'd finally made it. One afternoon on the Metro I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and looked into the greenest eyes I'd ever seen on a human being. "N'oubliez pas votre parapluie." "What? I'm sorry I don't speak.." At that moment the train lurched into the station and I almost fell to my knees. By the time I collected myself, I was alone in the car. That night I found a key in my pocket with a tag that said "4 Ropon 88-233"...

The pendant is fine silver (99.9%), oxidized to an antique bronze finish. It's 1 inch tall and hangs from a 17 inch gunmetal chain that closes with a lobster clasp.

Childhood dream, take 3

Fairly soon after I started working with PMC, I bought a Paragon Quick Fire kiln. There was a less expensive option, but when I read that the Quick Fire can also be used to enamel metal and fuse glass, I was sold. Ever since I saw pictures of copper enameling in a crafts encyclopedia when I was around 9, I've wanted to try it. I still remember clearly the piece that illustrated the article: it was a largish round pendant that had been covered with a layer of enamel and then had a lump and two threads added to make a design like this. Very 60s astro modern. The idea that you could actually take glass that was powdered or in thin threads or lumps and melt it to metal blew me away. This was glass like I'd never thought of it before and the process seemed somehow occult. I kept my fascination with enameling but never took a course and never tried it. Now, the Quick Fire promised to make all those childhood dreams come true, and more! Not only could I fire my pmc pieces, I could enamel them and even make fused glass pendants to go with them! I could turn out amazing multi-media art jewelry made completely from components that I had created, even down to the jump rings! (Never mind that I haven't actually started making my own jump rings in spite of the fact that I have a saw. It just seems so fiddly.) I was sold.

In retrospect, I think I was a little overly optimistic. Let me tell you something: enameling is not easy. There's some serious chemistry and physics going on in this process and, in spite of having several books to consult, I have not yet become one with the process. At first I couldn't get the powder to come out of the sifter at all. The books always show people doing it with this elegant one-handed tapping motion. All I managed to do was give myself a hand cramp. So I put the piece down to coat it and used two hands (something you're not supposed to do since then you have to somehow pick it up without disturbing the enamel powder). Naturally, when I tried to pick it up, I disturbed the enamel powder and had to re-coat the piece. Figuring out how hot and how long to fire the pieces should have been easy: every book has loads of charts. It wasn't. The first pieces I tried out had a variety of problems: uneven coating, pulling away from the edge, weird texture from being over-fired (or possibly under-fired). And sometimes the enamel just popped right off the metal as it cooled. (Note on the red piece my failed attempt to recreate that childhood memory.) I realized that I wasn't going to be making an fancy enamel jewelry anytime soon, so I put the supplies away and decided to focus on the work with pmc.

A couple of months later I was working with the pinch form in pmc: what you get when you pinch a ball of clay between the thumb and forefinger of both hands at the same time. (The necklace to the right has three pinches that I drilled and strung directly onto a wire cable. One is heavily oxidized, the other two are highly polished.) I fused several small ones together and liked the shape, but there was a hole in the middle that needed something. Then I remembered the container full of glass lumps packed away with all the other enameling supplies. I got them out, fired up the kiln, and stuck a chunk of blue glass into the middle of the cluster of pinches. I heated it just until the glass balled up, not long enough for it to spread out flat. It worked! The light shines through the back of the form so the blue glass looks positively illuminated. I've worn it a few times and fiddled with it a lot and the glass still hasn't fallen off. (The color of the silver in the picture is wrong - it's not actually brown. The color of the blue is right though.)

Not wanting to stretch my luck, I let another couple of months go by before trying enamel again. That was this morning. This time I had a couple of pieces that I'd created from scraps particularly to use with enamel. One is a little cup that I filled with large chunks of transparent red glass. The other is the oval pendant with blue and green swirls. As you can see, I'm still not making beautiful enamel jewelry, but I'm getting the hang of how hot and how long to fire the pieces. I'm definitely having better luck with enamel on fine silver than enamel on copper though. Just to see if I could do it, I tried enameling a blank oval copper pendant. I put a layer of clear enamel over the copper and added just a couple of chunks of green glass in different shades. It was quite pretty - except for the part where the enamel popped off the metal as it cooled. It doesn't matter. The Quick Fire kiln is amortizing rapidly and my childhood dream of enameling on copper is just around the corner. Really.

In search of Daniel Craig

Daniel Craig, the most recent James Bond, isn't what you'd call handsome. The Rolling Stone called him a "rugged, jug-eared Brit, whose irregular features improbably radiate a megawatt star charisma". My partner told me about a French phrase, belle-laide, which means "ugly beauty". That's Craig - it's a look I like, and not just in people.

Yesterday I wrote that the more I work with pmc the less I care about making pretty pieces. It's not that I don't care at all, but sometimes the process is more interesting, more compelling than the final product. So there are times when I have a decent looking piece of silver that could be turned into an acceptably pretty piece of jewelry, but I can't help but push it. I hammer it, torch it, twist it to see what happens. Recently I sold a necklace that I think is very much in the belle-laide category. When I listed it, I honestly didn't think anyone would buy it, though I quite liked it. The first thing my partner said when she saw it was "That's creepy." I named it the Xena pendant (as in Xena, Warrior Princess, a guilty pleasure), but at home we called it The Mouth of Doom. An acquaintance bought it the other night and when she tried it on I was really taken aback at how much better it looked on her than it did in the photographs or even on me. Some pieces of jewelry don't really show you what they are until they're worn by the right person.

Working this way is exciting -- you have to be willing to trust your instincts, take risks, and enjoy the outcome - even if it's not pretty. It also means that sometimes things go terribly wrong and instead of something pretty or even belle-laide, I end up with a bunch of truly ugly bits, like these. I've heard that some places will melt scrap into raw material, but some of these pieces are enameled or have non-silver wire fused into them, so I think that option is out. Perhaps I'll collect a few more of these plug uglies and make a charmless bracelet.

There's a piece I'm working on that's similar to the Xena pendant. It's a combination of heavy gauge sterling silver wire and fine silver and it's really been through the wringer. It's not finished and I've been puzzling about where to go with it for a couple of days. The frame and teeth are sterling silver wire, the organic looking center is pmc - it's sitting on a coiled, fused base of thinner gauge sterling silver wire. What I can't decide is whether to fill the area between the center and the frame with weirdly organic petals or pods or tentacles. And if yes, then what should they be made of? More pmc? pmc touched with gold? more sterling wire? polyclay in odd organic colors and shapes? chunks of enamel? paper? And do I cover up the coiled, fused backside or just let that be part of the design? In other words, how do I move this piece from creepy to Daniel Craig? So far I think I've achieved "rugged", "jug-eared", and "irregular". The question is, how do I get it to "radiate a megawatt star charisma"? Stay tuned.

PMC Process

When I started working with precious metal clay I was very nervous about the cost and feared that I would waste the tiny lump while fiddling around trying to figure out what to do with it.I sprayed everything in sight with so much lubricant and covered my hands with so much Badger Balm that I was dropping tools right and left. Between the slippery surface and slippery roller and slippery hands, just getting the damn stuff flat was a major undertaking. I used an old brass filigree to texture some clay – but the filigree was probably the only thing in the room not covered with lubricant so, of course, it stuck and tore the sheet of quickly drying pmc to shreds. Panic! By the time I had a couple of pieces drying on the cup warmer, my heart was pounding and I was exhausted. Who knew working with pmc could give you a cardio-vascular workout?

Those first pieces looked ok, though they were quite ragged – I forgot to sand them while leather hard. And let me tell you, it’s much easier to sand pre-fired pmc than to sand post-fired actual silver metal. But all was not well. One of the pieces snapped in the hands of my curious partner and I broke another while polishing it. (I think the problem was that I hadn’t fired them long enough.) I was devastated. Then I read some online instructions about working with pmc that included the line “Make lemonade”. So I did.

Making the next batch was much less stressful – it helps if you’re not holding a lubricant-doused clay knife in a death grip. That’s when I made these two pieces, which are what I’d had in mind when I first started thinking about working with pmc.

It’s a thrill when an idea becomes a real object on your work table. They aren’t exactly what I imagined, but, as Pablo said: "An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought."

The more I work with pmc, the less I care about making pretty things. I've been hammering it (see Ragged Heart below), bending it, carving it roughly after firing, even heating fired pieces with a torch to see what happens when they're over-fired.

Then a couple of weeks ago I was reading Donald Friedlich's preface to Tim McCreight's PMC Decade -- an unbelievably gorgeous and inspiring book -- and found this: "...Mimlitsch-Gray has taken [an] irreverent and almost violent approach to metal clay, by simply stepping on the clay with her sneaker to make a wonderfully raw and crumbly object that is rich with texture. This object could be made of no other material." Lightbulb! It's clay! Then it's metal! Stages! Process! I immediately went into the studio and made this pendant by rolling some pmc into a ball and stamping it with a sealing wax-type stamp. I smoothed the edges only enough to prevent injury and oxidized it. Yes, you could do this with lost wax casting and probably some other techniques that I don't even know exist yet, but I love this piece because it's all about what you can do with stuff that is clay first and then metal.