Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist September/October 2019

“IN INDUSTRY FACEBOOK POSTS, jewelers say they fear consumers will get confused between manmade gems and real,” reports Betsy Lehndorff in a short piece about her interest in some manmade emerald rough. Seems to me if they’d stop suggesting that real is the opposite of manmade, we’d have much less confusion all around. If you see it, hold it, plop it in a setting… it’s real, all right, it’s not a figment of anyone’s imagination or a hologram, now is it? It’s not a fake, either, unless someone is trying to pass it off as something, anything, that it isn’t — which would also apply for anything else on earth. It’s not a rip-off unless someone is charging a predatorily exorbitant price for it — ditto. More than that, a manmade emerald,…

WHEN I BEGAN TO MAKE JEWELRY, I used metal and stone just like paint, paper, and ink — as mediums of artistic expression. Focused on getting an idea out of my head and into my hands, I often worked without finishing just to expand my skill set. Nowadays, I find myself fussing over edges, surfaces, and contours way more than I used to. I want my work to express ideas — and function, appeal to my design sense, and feel good to touch or wear. Now that I’m concerned with finish, too, I’ve become inordinately fond of abrasive papers, files, polishing compounds, and professional stone setting tools. Abrasives There is nothing like a studio purge to get your juices flowing. Last year, I promised myself that I would use up all the…

AT ONE TIME, labradorite was fairly unknown in jewelry. Maybe you’ve seen or heard of it as a facing for buildings. But today, its best examples have taken their rightful place in the gemstone market. A member of the extended feldspar family, labradorite comes to fame because of its iridescent color display. Called labradorescence, it is often likened to opal’s play-ofcolor, though the phenomena are caused by different optical effects. The body color of labradorite is usually medium to dark gray. The darker the body color, the better it shows off its flashes of color. That is not to dismiss stones with a light body color. These are called “rainbow moonstone,” and the color display is more ethereal compared to the down to earth, peacock colors of dark-bodied labradorite. The most…

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STARING AT THE JUNK in my bench drawer one day, I wondered what I should do with all of it. Scrap it for money? Melt it down and make ingots? Recycle it somehow, maybe upcycle it, I thought. All it needs is a little help. Then it hit me. I’d challenge myself to make a project using only what I had on hand, and all the metal had to come from my drawer. Now I had a plan, but what would it look like? Next, I started going through the scraps of paper I lovingly call my sketchbook and came across a quick drawing that captured my imagination. The sketch of four pie shapes on a ring looked like it had potential, but it needed a little help, too. I started…

A TALENTED AND self-reliant gold/silversmith form northern California, Eric Smith was kind enough to share his technique for making this shell bracelet with me and all of you. I’d become interested in these Miocene age fossil shells of the genus Anadara after finding some on an Oregon beach. When I came upon dealer Bob Boss selling them at Tucson one year, I asked Bob if he could tell me who made jewelry with the shells, and he put me in touch with Eric. Although you don’t have to do it this way, Eric fabricates all of his own metal components, from alloying the metals to producing wire and even solders. PREPARING THE SHELLS Three Anadara shell pieces were selected for use in this bracelet. The two end ones were matched for color…