What got you into this?

Jewelry Discussion
21

I was raised in Tucson where there are many Indian Jewelry stores.
Loved the jewelry. I bought a ring from Sam Patania’s families shop
when I was in high school.

Never thought I would be creating jewelry I was creating relief
Indian and Cowboy scenes in the copper and selling them. I found I
could use the copper as a mold and pour about 3/4 of a inch of
plaster in the back. The plaster could be painted to look just like
the copper. I was selling the reproductions. I had one picture that
was 36" wide and 18 " tall. The plaster was too fragile so I was
looking for a more sturdy material.

I asked my buddy Dee Morris if he had any ideas. He said why don’t
you look into lost wax casting.

I asked what the heck was lost wax casting. He gave me a block of
wax andsome instructions. I carved a buckle which he cast.

That was it.

I started making buckles by pouring wax into copper relief of
cowboys and Indians.

I took three buckles to a store. A customer bought them and ordered
10 each of the seven different designs I had.

Bought casting equipment and was off.

I have been creating southwest jewelry and silver pots since 1975.

In 1982 I quit my engineering job and started making jewelry full
time. I am slowed down by age now but I still create.

I sell all my work to a jewelry dealer.
Lee Epperson

22

When I was 15 I spent time with a uncle who taught me some basics of
Silver smithing he start with how to make my own tools. I went on
from there to become a chef and later a executive chef. I loved my
work it gave me a creative out let. 12/27/07 while moving a food
delivery a ramp collapsed injuring my spine in five places. My
husband had been undergoing chemo for over a year and had depleted
all our saving. So when my employer refused to even pay my medical
bills, it was devastating. We were forced to sell everything. I was
left unable to work. No one will hire a executive chef who is in a
wheelchair. Out of frustration and boredom I started making a few
tools and later some jewelry. When I was forced to leave home (big
pine key) I moved to port charlotte Florida I was able to buy a small
home a built a shop beside my house. Making jewelry give me that same
creative out let I got from cooking. It is still very slow getting
started still assembling tools. I noticed in reading some of the
other posts that I am not the only one using jewelry as a form of
physical and emotional therapy not to mention objective poverty of
our socials security system.

I have had a lot of setbacks but keep plugging along.

Jen lane

23

I was nearing the ripe old age of 15 and was at an interview with the
school careers officer. We had the Elstree MGM film studios near
where I lived and my first choice of career was to be a scenery
painter as one of my neighbours was in this trade and I liked the
idea as a career. The school careers officer could only offer me a
possible job as a scenery constructor plasterer’s apprentice, I was
not interested in this so the careers officer looked at my last exam
results and saw that I had achieved very high marks in art and
metalwork, so he suggested that I might like to become a artistic
metalworker. He arranged for an interview for me at a goldsmiths and
silversmiths manufacturing company, based in Soho, London. After the
interview I was offered either a silversmith or goldsmith’s
apprenticeship, I accepted the goldsmith apprenticeship and after a
trial period was indentured (officially signed up) at an official
ceremony held in the Goldsmiths Hall as an apprentice goldsmith, I
was then aged 15 and my apprenticeship would run until my 21st.

birthday. This was in 1961 and the rest is history, the best choice
of a career I could have ever made.

James Miller FIPG

24

Hello Orchidland,

I have enjoyed the various stories, so will add mine.

My journey into silver work began in high school. In my senior year,
I wanted to take the newly offered jewelry class, but had a schedule
conflict. The teacher (bless him) allowed me to come in and work in
the jewelry lab while he was teaching sculpture. At that time, the
school supplied the silver, and with no competition for use of
equipment, I went into full mode production. It was exciting! Thanks
to that teacher’s willingness to extend himself, I had a very
positive experience.

Next I took a jewelry course in college. Not as exciting since I had
to share equipment and wait for others to complete their turn. Still
learned a bunch.

Then marriage and my hubbie’s military service took us elsewhere.
One station was Abilene TX, where I met an amazing jeweler. He had a
home studio, doing work for several retail jewelry stores. Talk
about paying it forward, Mr. Cook took me back to some basic
techniques like casting from old pieces, using a mill, soldering
gold, setting faceted stones, etc. All without charge!

From that time forward, my goal was to accumulate jewelry making
tools so Icould make pretties at home. It’s been a slow process, but
well worth it.

Judy in Kansas, where summer has made a reappearance. University
students are back in town, and the first football game is this
Saturday.

25

Hi All from the Old World,

Hind sight is the perfect science and its easy now that im coming to
the end of a long and successful chareer of 46 yrs in metal working
to see how it all came together, at the time it was largely instinct
that showed the way.

There were 3 important influences before 1968 when I embarked on
this journey, the first was from 1934 to 1967. I grew up in Prague
with a Czech mother and English Father, who had a very good job with
Mobil E Europe. Both my parents were able to collect their interest
in art from paintings by old masters to Dresden and Bokara carpets.
In addition a fine collection of illustrated books on all aspects of
art.

The first, I was therefore exposed to all this especially a coloured
book on the work of Faberge’s enamelled easter eggs.

More on these later.

In 1938 my Father was advised by the British embassy in Prague that
he should return to the UK with his family.

For many reasons he chose to relocate to the S coast to Bournemouth
where he was employed on specialist war work.

To get me out from under my mothers feet, during the school holidays
she bought for me a free pass to the Russell Coates museum some 7
miles away, where I would spend many happy days just soaking up
everything that was to see.

By the time I was 17, I was a thoroughly obnoxious teenager, and on
the advice of an aunt was enrolled in a school of dance and drama in
London.

Likewise I would spend many afternoons in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, the Science musieum in the S Kensington area where I was
billeted in a hostel.

the second, was as all young able bodied young men were due then, it
was time for compulsory military service.

An uncle advised that IF I coulf get in to the RAF AND get onto a
training course for a flight engineer it would be a better time
spent instead of in the army in the cook house. Much to my surprise,
I was accepted, passed all the tests, and went through the most
rigorous training in all aspects of aviation engineering before I was
even allowed to see an aeroplane!.

that lasted from 1952 to 1955, when I was due for normal discharge.
Then A friend said why dont we go to Canada to see whats there? so I
emigrated to Motreal and was there in various occupations mainly
aviation for some 2 yrs when I returned for family reasons to the
UK.

The third, ,What to do? I met by chance an agent for the Sun Life of
Canada, who thought Id be a good rep. So started an 11 yr stint with
them where I learned everything about business, money management,
savings, investment and underwriting. And a good sales training. A
great ethical company whom I enjoyed working for. However, chareer
prospects didnt look good so I felt at 34 it was time to move on.

Were now at 1968, and with a family and mortgage no spare time to
play, it was results as soon as possible to keep the roof over our
heads…

Well, I thought of several things, like building wooden boats or
running a sawmil or how about doing enamelling like the beautiful
colours on the Faberge easter eggs? I remembered as a child? What a
dream! I chose the latter and so started a period of research into
kilns techniques and enamels. I went to see all the UK makers but
wanted to go further, who made enamels for Faberge? I found out it
was Schauer in Vienna.

Off we went and spent a week there in their factory learning all I
could. Back in the UK, within 3 months had some useable results in
small items like pendants brooches etc, and the next step was to
market them. Not much luck locally, but a friend said why dont you
take a corner of my stall in London in the Portobello road. Thats was
where the money was. In 1979 I was working in a cellar in our house,
and it wasnt good. So I looked for more suitable premises. I found a
derelict small farm some 10 miles away and took it on. Been here ever
since. Thats another story as well!.

That set the scene for the next 14 yrs. Make during the week. sell
one day a week.

The rest since 1968/9 till now is another story.

Thanks for reading.

Ted

26

Tumeric & Bromeline works for me! It takes a week or so to build up in
your system then its all good. Relieves my lower back pain and hand.

Aurora

27

Three cheers for Sir John Cass, Algate East tube stop, circa 1977.
Not what got me into this, but certainly what dragged me to the next
level in goldsmithing and engraving. Come to think of it, three more
cheers for the best engraving teacher of all time, Stanley Reese, who
taught there. The most exquisitely cut lines by the most patient and
encouraging master you can imagine. And boy did he need to be patient
and encouraging with me. Kate in northern California where we
await the arrival of Godzilla El Nino with eagerness and trepidation.

28

I worked for government in a creative job that required learning 20
new things a day. I loved it but it did not pay well. I said I would
stay until I had found what I really wanted to do.

At 52ish, I bought a dress that was decorated with abstract metal
paint. The paint was mat and all the jewelry that year was shiny. I
got a brochure from an adult school at a local high school. There
was a jewelry class and with the confidence of the ignorant, I
figured I could make my own jewelry. It was certainly harder than I
anticipated, but the first time I hit a hammer on metal, I knew I
had found that elusive gift of knowing what I wanted to do. I was
shocked as I was not the designated ‘artist’ in the family but it
seemed all my friends knew I was and were not surprised at my
discovery.

I worked only to the minimum retirement date, joined the
Pennsylvania Society of Goldsmiths and the Florida Society of
Goldsmiths, and started to explore this new endeavor.

By the way, I don’t think I would have liked making jewelry if it
wasn’t for the teacher. Instead of spending the entire semester
doing on project exactly the same as the other students, he taught
us how to use some tools, how to prevent cutting off fingers, and
how to avoid blowing up the studio. The he told us to make something
we would like to do. He kept a close eye on us and only commented
when we were doing something dangerous. He never said a project was
too advanced. I did things no beginner should have done. Making
boxes, putting a silver bezel on top of a copper wire with a huge
amount of metal on the ring with a braising torch. He never told me
I was nuts.

PSG has moved to an inconvenient location with few workshops and
participation events, so I am wondering if some of the ‘lurkers’
here would like to start up something in Philadelphia again? Contact
me off line.

Esta Jo
Shifting Metal
shiftingmetal.com

29

I was making documentary films which means I was constantly
raising/begging for money. A close friend owned a jewelry/gift store
and liked to take me with her on buying trips. She humored me saying
she needed me to help her decide what to buy. Then one time she said,
you could buy some of this jewelry and sell it to friends, at
parties, etc. and make some money for your films. So I did. This was
silver jewelry with mostly made in Bali, India, etc.
Prices were low then so it was easy to resell what I had purchased.
Then a couple of things broke so I enrolled in a silver-smithing
class at adult night school to, I thought, learn how to repair the
broken pieces.

Once I got in the class I forgot all about my original goal. I
couldn’t believe how much fun it was to make a nice looking piece of
jewelry. Little by little, people began buying what I made at the
jewelry parties, preferring my pieces to the purchased ones.
Eventually the parties gave way to art fairs.

I still thought of this as a nice hobby until post production of my
last film. After hours in a dark editing room, everything digital,
often buggy digital, I found it a soothing stress reliever to go home
and work on a piece of jewelry. I was by then also beading which I
could do late at night. Next I enrolled in our community college’s
metals program and have taken a few workshops. I love it that there
is always more to learn so I never tire of the process of creation
and fabrication.

I haven’t made another film. Well, one small one but that life is
behind me and I do not miss it. I plan to keep doing this until I
physically can’t.

Beverly Jones
Pasadena, CA

30

I was born an artist. It was just a matter of finding the right
medium. Junior year in high school, walked into Jewelry 1 class. By
end of 1st semester, I told my teacher, this is my career. Off to
college and 2 degrees later in jewelry/metals, I was working as a
benchworker for several jewelry stores before I need went
independent. Started doing high end craft shows and teaching jewelry
making and silversmithing. Been doing that since then. I’ve put in a
solid 31 years into my craft and still love it, and I’m not quite 50
yet. Plan on being a metalsmith till I drop dead. I literally eat,
live, breath metal. Working as a goldsmith more now to cut back on
the teaching and learning high tech stuff like laser welding which I
love.

Joy Raskin

31

I didn’t choose jewelry, jewelry chose me.

My Dad was an engraver and metalsmith. My first real exposure to the
trade was when I was about ten. A friend from his school days
stopped by with a Colt Single Action Army revolver that he had just
engraved. I was gob-smacked. It was the most beautiful thing I had
ever seen. I asked Dad if he would teach me how to engrave. He agreed
and took off for a half hour or so.

When he got back home he had a spiral notebook and a box of pencils.
He opened the notebook and drew a half-dozen or so beauty stems and
told me to fill the notebook with them. I thought he was kidding, but
he wasn’t. After filling about three pages, he looked at it, circled
two or three on each page and told me that these were OK, the rest
were trash. Keep after it.

Another ten pages or so, he stopped me and drew a half-dozen open
6’s. Same thing. Fill the rest of the book with these. Two or three
were OK, the rest didn’t cut it. A few days later, he said that it
looked like I was finally getting the hang of it and I asked him
(again) to explain. He showed me how these two shapes could be
combined and/or modified to draw every letter in the English language
in script. In order to do good scroll work or pretty much any other
type of engraving, I needed to master lettering first

When I asked when we were going to start cutting metal he said,
“When you master the pencil. The most important tool in engraving is
the pencil. Cutting’s easy, layout and design is hard. If you can’t
draw it, you can’t cut it.” No truer words were ever spoken
concerning engraving, I still practice the drawing exercises he
taught me nearly a half-century ago.

In the spring of 1971, Dad quit his job and opened the first family
jewelry “store” in a tent on the Bunny Slope at Loon Mountain, NH. I
worked for him until 1975 when I went to college and later joined
the Army, where I followed what I thought at the time was my life’s
dream and became an Aviator, flying attack helicopters for the 1st
Cavalry at Ft Hood, TX. When I left active duty in November of '84, I
went to work at the family store again, then located in Plano, TX -
just until I could find a flying job. I’ve been engraving and making
jewelry ever since.

Now I own a retail custom shop. I work with my wife of 38 years, my
son and employ three benchies and several other people. Life couldn’t
be much better. I could have made a lot more money flying for an
airline or gotten better benefits flying the border for the DEA, but
I guarantee I wouldn’t be nearly as happy. The cockpit offers a great
corner office view, but except for the occasional moment of sheer
terror, most flying is as boring as watching paint dry.

One piece of advice I give all of my apprentices on their first day
is to make sure they really want to start doing this. Because once
you let it get under your skin, there’s no turning back, You’re
hooked for life.

Dave Phelps

32

Because of internet problems I’ve just got back to accessing this
forum and found this topic. I know its very late, but here goes.

I started about 55 years ago, when I was 21. Up to that time I had
no interest in jewellery whatsoever. I had no idea how stuff got into
jeweller’s shops nor how it was made.

My girlfriend and I went to a party where the host had a
puzzle-ring. I’d never seen a puzzle-ring before and was fascinated
by it. I tried almost the entire evening to solve it, but failed. I
tried to buy it from the owner, but they wouldn’t sell.

I then started looking into jewellers windows, but never found a
puzzle-ring. Unknown to me, my girlfriend was also looking, with
rather more success. She found and purchased one from the Burlington
Arcade, London, and gave to me as a Christmas present. It was made of
gold, and, unlike the silver one at the party which was made of cast
links, was clearly made of wire.

I was intrigued, I reckoned I could make one. I bent up some copper
wire and made a puzzle-ring. It wasn’t very good, but it worked. I
made a couple more, each one an improvement over the previous, until
I decided I should try a silver one. Trouble was, I had no idea where
I could by some sterling silver wire. I asked in a local jeweller’s
shop who suggested I try a bullion dealer. Again I had no idea, but
was eventually pointed at Johnson Matthey in Hatton Garden. I found
out where Hatton Garden was, got on a tube train, and went there. I
was directed to a very impressive building, with marble steps leading
up to mahogany doors which were opened by uniformed doormen. Inside
was a massive mahogany counter that seemed to stretch forever.
Feeling very nervous and unimportant I asked for 12" of 1/16" silver,
and some silver solder, which was duly served up without any comment
at all.

I went home with my ‘prize’ and made a silver puzzle ring. It wasn’t
bad. An aunt saw it and asked if I would make her one, so I sold it
to her, went back to buy some more silver, and made another one,
which another aunt saw and bought. My mother was one of 11, so I had
lots of aunts. After making about 4 silver rings I eventually got up
enough courage to make a gold one, which was sold to yet another
aunt.

At this point, another aunt said she would like me to make her a
ring, but not a puzzle-ring. Could I make her a ring with a stone in?
Feeling rather over-confident I said yes - but I really had no idea
how to do it, so I went to the local library and borrowed a book
called (I think) “Making and Repairing Jewellery”. I devoured the
contents, went to Hatton Garden, purchased a stone (a green zircon),
a coronet collet, and some D-section gold wire. When I got home I
managed to make a passable gold ring with a claw-set green zircon.

I was hooked. I gradually got more and more tools and more and more
ambitious. I can now tackle just about anything and have lots of
experience. And I have my own assay mark with the Birmingham Assay
Office.

33

Sounds a lot how I got hooked… :slight_smile:

Vernon Wilson

34

Just about as long as I can remember I’ve had this natural attraction
to colored stones. As a child in the 1930’s I’d gaze for long periods
at a colorplate in a dictionary we had that showed a picture of many
of them. An elderly friend of my grandparents wore a silver cuff
bracelet with a large turquoise that fascinated me. Years later, in
the 60s during the turquoise craze, I was attracted to the turquoise
pieces I saw just about everywhere couldn’t afford them but I figured
they couldn’t be that hard to make myself, so I took a correspondence
course in silversmithing. Of course I soon foundout there was a bit
more to it than I had counted on, but stuck with it and one thing led
to another. Got into cutting cabs, then into mounting them in silver.
Graduated to faceting and working with gold seemed to come naturally.
About 1985 I made a small business of doing repairs, custom jewelry
and so forth and am still at it.

Jerry in Kodiak

35

I found fossil corals on my school playground (gravel on the
sportsfield? what were they thinkingee)

Been a collector ever since. smithing is a natural extension of that
love.

36

When one day in Lab I discovered that I was the only one in my
College Geology Labs that really appreciated the beauty of a silica
fossilized Trilobite, I realized at that moment that I’d prefer
making beautiful things fromunusual, and beautiful stones, to
identifying and cataloging Species and Eras. That day my entire focus
shifted from science and math, to creating with my hands.

37

High school art class was the only class I never cut (1976), walked
in one day and saw a strange looking machine. Turned out it was a
Highland Park lapidary machine with a saw and multiple wheels for
grinding, sanding, and polishing. I now own a machine exactly like
it, among others. Been hooked ever since cutting my first cab. A
collection of cabs soon makes one consider how best to show them
off. Glue did not appeal, so silver was my new love.

I don’t think I ever thanked my teacher but I am eternally grateful
for his willingness to go beyond minimal requirements. Those
machines are big, heavy, and awkward to move, he must have really
cared about us.

Janice Lea

38

I was always fascinated by jewelry as a little girl, especially tiny
detailed charms for bracelets. When I was old enough to get a job, I
spent a lot on silver jewelry for myself. One day, I was wandering
around Central Square in Cambridge, MA, depressed and uninspired.
There was a store called Pearl Art & Craft, and I went inside
because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. I thought I could
buy some paints or something. On the lower floor, I turned down an
aisle that sold beads and stringing supplies, stuff to make necklaces
and earrings, etc. I was SHOCKED. it never occurred to methat jewelry
was made by people. I guess I thought it materialized out of thin air
or something. To see all the jewelry-making stuff was a revelation,
to say the least. I said, “I can do that!” And so I did. That was 20
or so years ago. I consider myself a metalsmith now and work
full-time as abench jeweler. I feel that, for better or worse,
successful or not, jewelry is a destiny for me.

39

I bought a hand painted dress 15 years ago and couldn’t find a good
pair of earrings to go with it. So I took a class at a local high
school figuring I could make a pair (how difficult could it be, after
all?). The first time I hit metal with a hammer I knew I had finally
found what I wanted to do. Have been making metal things since. Here
are some pictures. Forgive the weird pose.



Esta Jo Schifter
Shifting Metal
shiftingmetal.com