A Turquoise Legacy

Al had a hobby.  He had been a 5^th grade school teacher, postmaster, served in the Air Core in WW II and was part of the National Guard for 30 years.  Actually he had various hobbies but the one that gave me the privilege of collaborating with him was the hobby of collecting turquoise and making jewelry.  From family remembrances he collected turquoise from open air mines in New Mexico the summer of 1951.  From the color and composition of the stones I think that they are from the Santa Rita (for most of the single stones) and Tyrone mines (for some of the nuggets).  Both of these mines are near the Gila National Forest reserve in New Mexico.

The heirs presented to me 24 unset stones, all cut and polished; about 50% backed with Devcon, which already indicates a certain expertise in working with stones.  The backing is added to the stone rough to consolidate a thin or fragile specimen so that it can be cut and polished.  There were also 41 turquoise nuggets, numerous small pieces of coral branches and a horseshoe pendant, 2 bolo tie bases with three tips, a half finished belt buckle and a small mounting for a piece of turquoise.   And there was also a bag of silver wire, beads, links, sheet and other preformed shapes.

I know little or nothing about stone cutting and consolidating but I was positively impressed by the silversmithing of this determined hobbyist.   And so I began to collaborate with him and his heirs.  The children’s desire was that every family member would have a piece of turquoise mounted in sterling silver – Al’s wife, an aunt, daughters, grandchildren, great grandchildren, a good friend and myself.  

I felt that my first obligation was to render functional and nicely finished the objects that Al had begun and not completed.  Again, I was impressed with the technical skill of Al as I handled heavy pieces on which he had soldered thin walled bezels without meltdown or fire scale.

All of the settings that I did are handmade and one-of-a-kind.  The techniques used range from lost wax casting, fabrication and fold forming.  As this is natural, non-stabilized turquoise it is somewhat fragile and therefore I lined all of the holes of the nuggets with silver tubing so that the stringing material (in this case silver wire) does not come into contact with and does not abrade the turquoise.

I live and work in Italy and Al’s family is in the US.  Generally I get back to the US once a year so I had a year to complete this project.  When I would get a jewelry order here I would get the order out and then apply myself to the turquoise cache.  As I do only custom jewelry the final client is a person that I have seen or heard about and I think about them as I do the design, work the metal and prepare the setting for the stones.  I had been given the name of every family member and some of them had been described for physical or personality characteristics.  So I spent a lot of time that year thinking about the people in the family.

After the project was finished, a son-in-law of Al mentioned that Al was colorblind, not the normal red-green colorblind.  Al saw only in black, white and shades of gray.  When we solder we observe closely the color of the metal to determine how hot it is.  How did Al solder?  How did Al distinguish a piece of turquoise from the surrounding pebbles and dirt?

Fold Forming Adventure

A talented young gentleman, about to become a father for the first time, wanted a marvelous gift for his much loved and very gifted wife.  He liked a pendant called Pure Treasure I.   

The central part of the pendant is fold formed pure gold and has four puncture holes through which a fine silver ribbon winds its way from front to back and around the central body.  This is not a small pendant.  It is 1 1/4 in (32 mm) wide and 2 5/8 in (62 mm) high. But he thought that adding a rose gold ribbon that would intertwine with the silver ribbon would add more color and movement and would enrich the pendant.

Note to fold formers:  I take extensive notes for all of the fold formed jewelry that I make so as to be able to produce a similar object on request.  For the original Pure Treasure I pendant I traced around the metal shape before it was fold formed and determined the fold lines, recorded the thickness and weight of the plate and the direction of and number of pulls through the rolling mill.  I re-melted and folded and pulled the pure gold central element of the new pendant three times before arriving to an acceptable equivalent of the original.  Beware that a variation in thickness of the plate of less than 1/10 of a millimeter from the original, upon being folded and pulled, will probably produce a nice form but be considerably different from the original.  Actually any variation whatsoever in the weight, the placement of the folds, the distance between the cylinders of the rolling mill – any difference from the original model will be expanded in the rolling process.

Pure Treasure I, original pendant, front

Pure Treasure I, reproduction, front

Pure Treasure I, original pendant, back

Pure Treasure I, reproduction, back

 The client was right.  The resulting pendant is more intricate (interesting) for color and movement.  Serendipity determined that with this variant the back of the pendant would become as beautiful as the front, so now there is no defined front or back and the pendant can be worn indifferently.

 

Fold Forming

Fold forming is a technique for jewelry creation developed principally by Charles Lewton-Brain in the mid 1980's.

 It is a modern procedure and a revolutionary method of metalsmithing. It is based on the concept of using the characteristics of the metal to achieve a form. There are several divisions of fold forming. The specific technique that I use is called rolled fold.

In the rolled fold a sheet of metal is folded one or more times. The folded metal is run through the rolling mill and then unfolded. A rolling mill has two parallel steel cylinders. The top cylinder can be lowered against the bottom cylinder. The metal run through the mill becomes progressively thinner as the distance between the cylinders decreases. The areas with more layers - thicker – will stretch more than thin areas. The resulting form may have some very thin areas but the curved lines that are a result of rolling give structural strength. The rolled fold piece is much stronger that a sheet of metal of the same area and thickness.

Fold Formed Sterling Silver Bracelet Whipped Cream

The extraordinary volumes produced with the rolled fold method yield striking and visually intriguing forms. The lines are organic and flowing, seemingly repetitive, but never the same. Each piece of jewelry is individually hand crafted. A design can be reproduced but there will be slight variations in the product. This means that no two pieces of jewelry will be identical.

I have fold formed sterling silver, 18K yellow gold and 24K gold. The physical properties of these metals are very different.

Fold Formed Sterling Silver Bracelet Earthquake

Fold Formed Sterling Silver Shawl Pin

Sterling silver is fluid and can yield spectacular volumes.

Fold Formed 18K Yellow Gold Pendant Waves

Fold Formed and Fabricated 18K Yellow Gold and Pietrosite Brooch

18K yellow gold work hardens quickly and must be annealed frequently during the folding, milling and unfolding.

Pure Gold and Fine Silver Pendant Pure Treasure II

24K gold does work harden to some extent. Considering the softness of pure gold, the increased hardness can be an advantage during unfolding.