Filligree

Jewelry Discussion
1

G’day; I made quite a few filligree pieces in sterling a while
ago just for the experience. My conclusion was that it is so
labour intensive that one would have to have an exhorbitant
charge-out rate to do it full time - and then you’d never sell
any. But I have seen some exquisite butterflies,dragonflies, etc
that look untouched by human hand. I then discovered that the
tourists who owned them paid ridiculous prices - like $20 for the
beautiful butterfly, and I learnt that it was made in India by a
local craftsman who was just completing it as she watched - using
a mouth-blowpipe and a candle! You’d have a job to compete with
that! Cheers,

    /\
   / /    John Burgess, 
  / /
 / //\    @John_Burgess2
/ / \ \

/ (___)
(_________)

2

Sure, John… but just add in the cost of airfare to India, and you’re
competitive again! :wink:

Dave Sebaste

3

I think that the Oppi book shows this in process. I seem to
recall that the soldering is done with a paste like mixture
of flux and solder filings that is packed around the
filligree and all is fired (torch) at one time. I think that
this mixture was refered to as “mud.” There was a speaker at
the Cincinatti SNAG Conference of a few years ago who made
a presentation about this. He had been in Africa in the
diplamatic corp and had no luck finding a teacher. He
finally sent to McCreight’s book and vidio and learned from
that. In fact, check out his book.

Marilyn Smith