Great stuff guy… keep it coming (please)
Best,
Jim
Avanyu Petroglyph
Avanyu, the water serpent, guardian of water, an important deity among Puebloan Indians in New Mexico and Arizona. This one, taken from a petroglyph on the Wells Petroglyph Preserve, was a gift for a special visitor to Santa Fe. It’s interesting because of its swirly character; most Avanyu depictions are wavy. Note also Venus, the morning star, to the right.
Alec
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Love your pieces. Thanks for sharing and I can’t wait to see more
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Thank you Erica.
Digging through my photos, I found the original petroglyph image for the above, and thought I’d share it with you all:
Avanyu Petroglyph
Alec
1 Like
I love that! You nailed it. It looks just like the petroglyph!
Something new… I love Sonoran Sunrise. Maybe not as much as Bradshaw Bowman at Kiva Koffeehouse in Grand Staircase National Monument who prices his Sonoran Sunrise cabs around $900, because he loves them so much he doesn’t really want to sell them. But I do love the stone.
I recently finished this cab cuff with a bit of Sonoran Sunrise:
Alec
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My “rain cloud” ring, taking a Southwestern motif and doing it differently. I’ve played around with this theme using a variety of stones from opal to native silver in cobalt. This one using Kingman turquoise is my favorite so far.
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Alec love your jewelry. Would love to make the book pendant. Are the front, spine and back one piece. Can I steal your idea? Believe me it would not look same when I make! But how to bend it? I have only fairly simple tools also weak hands. But I love the idea. I could do the texturing and inlay. But bending?? Or could I use 3 pieces and solder. Then solder the leaves. Once carved a wooden book with worm coming through it. One pieces of wood. Pages a bugger to do. Woodburned them.
Hi Jennifer,
Thanks. The boards and spine are indeed one piece, as are the “pages.” You won’t need a lot of tools for this, a torch, saw, square file, and a scribe will do it.
The following holds for both the boards/spine and pages: To get good bends, mark where the corners will be with the scribe. With your saw, cut into the flat of the metal, maybe half its thickness. Then use your file to create a V-shaped channel, being careful to not go through the metal. Then bend the boards or pages.
You’ll want to do most of your texturing before bending as the piece is hollow and won’t take a hammer blow. To create the pages, I used my scribe and ran it along the length of the unbent pages.
To assemble, fit one U shape into the other, and solder into place.
My original design sketch:
The first time I tried this, I made actual pages out of very, very thin gauge copper. I like this design more.
Good luck, and if you make one, please share it here.
Best,
Alec
4 Likes
Hi Alec
Very nice thread and work. It is always interesting to find out how one is drawn to metal working with history.
If your still in Silicon valley? I am about 100 miles south and have been doing this for 40 years.
Hope we can hook up
Regards
Franz
Thank you for the kind words, Franz. It’s always encouraging to hear as much from people like you who have been at this far longer than I have.
I left Silicon Valley for Santa Fe a couple of years ago. I didn’t move to become an artist, but it’s certainly a wonderful place to be if that’s what you are. (Plus, @RioGrande orders all arrive overnight!)
Best,
Alec
It’s been an incredibly busy summer here in Santa Fe. Now that we’re done with Spanish Market, Indian Market, Zozobra, and Fiesta de Santa Fe, I thought I’d share a few new pieces…
Zia Symbol Cuff
Sterling silver and Gaspeite
I love the color and pattern in this stone. Sadly, my supplier says she’s been unable to obtain any more pieces.
“Air Shaman” Cuff
8mm x 3mm sterling silver overlay cuff bracelet
Part of my first series, “4 Elemental Shamans,” inspired by petroglyphs of the Southwest.
“Water Shaman” Cuff
Another in the series, 8mm x 3mm sterling silver overlay with 14K yellow gold inlay for the staff.
“Air Shaman” Stud
This tiny sterling silver overlay stud is only 3/8” in diameter.
“Air Shaman” Stud
“Three Sheeps to the Wind”
Sterling silver overlay pendant/charm, 5/8” x 1”. This is an old design, one of my very first, inspired by the “boat-shaped sheep” petroglyphs of the Coso Rock Art District in eastern California. I wanted to go back to this and make it again to test my skills improvement.
Alec
6 Likes
Alec…
Man, I just love your work, The complexity of achieving “clean and simple” is deceiving, and you are a master.
The piercings with the symbolic and petroglyph images are the icing on the cake, primitive in motif, but thought provoking in process.
Great stuff…
Jim
2 Likes
HI Alec,
Very nice work! Some maw sit sit is similar to what you have pictured, perhaps with the green a bit deeper in color. I haven’t bought any of this, so IDK how available what you want it…I have seen some lately, but it is grayer rather than greener. Surely there is green available if you look around.
Jim, thank you as always. I’m still at that stage in my work where when I want to post something, I see every little flaw in the photos of my pieces, and making that final “click” to submit is sometimes difficult. So your encouragement means a lot to me.
Royjohn, I’ve seen maw sit sit, and lemon chrysoprase, and various other green stones. Some colors strike me deeply, others not as much. It wasn’t that I specifically wanted a green stone; I had this one sitting in my bench drawer for at least a year before I decided what to do with it. It was the stone that inspired this piece vs. a specific design that needed this stone (as compared to the “Rain Cloud” ring that certainly needed a cloud-like stone). Anyway, thank you for the compliment.
Alec
Lovely work. One word of advice. Photograph your work without props and on
a plain background. Galleries and magazines prefer plain. Plus you want
folks to focus on your jewelry.
Have fun and make lots of jewelry.
Jo Haemer
www.timothywgreen.com
Hi Alec,
Ted here in the UK,
Interesting use of glyphs, or cartouches or runes etc, jogged my memory to a series I did some 40 yrs ago, but with a differnt technique, to me, it looks as tho you have sawn out the designs, then soldered the pierced metal to a backing.
If your a good sawyer, then I suppose its quick, however my approach was quite different. I cut lots of designs into tool steel, obviously in the reverse, ive around 60 or so of punches
which produce designs into the metal like you do, but with a single blow with a hammer driving the punches into the metal.
With so many designs, I was able to make custom pictograms for individual customers needs, telling a story in fact.
Ill be coming to this product range later this year, still have all the punches! for my 50th anniversary show next year in June .
Currently remaking product design no 3. 30 off, and lots more designs to go. Cant wait to get up in the morning!.
Hey Alec,
I have some very nice “chrysopal” here that I think is really a very light chrysoprase. Pretty translucent. When I get around to cutting up this rock of it, I’d be happy to send you a cab if you’d put a picture up here and credit the stone if you decide to make a piece for it. Just shoot me an address to rkersey@tds.net.
royjohn
Hi Ted,
You’re correct, I’m piercing the front and soldering to a backplate. What I like about this (as opposed to stamping), is the depth I can achieve for the pattern. All of the front pieces in my recent post are 0.032” or 0.040” thick. I think this gives them a stronger, more impactful look.
Of course, piercing also gives me the freedom to modify my designs at whim. For the stud, I took an existing design, and turned it around to deliver as a gift in 24 hours.
Looking forward to seeing some of your photos as you bring your revived product range back.
-Alec
1 Like
Morning Alec,
Yes ,with 32 thou plus metal your way is the only way!.
however I should have mentioned I stamp into 100tho and up to 3/16th in thick, so achieve the same depth as you. Likewise oxidise to contrast.
Another thought for you, to eliminate having to use 2 layers had you thought to fill the cut outs with niello? used a lot here in Europe around 1900, and not much since. A nice contrast and different!.
Thanks for your interest in the remaking of my designs, Ive wondered whether perhaps I should post once a week, pics of each design production run, I make in lots of 20 plus, with a descriptive comment?
What do you think?
I would need to get my IT guru to do the pics, cant manage this new fangled pc stuff!.
Await your thoughts,
Ted.