My Bracelet and why

My Awesome Bracelet.
I have taken many trips in my life.Unfortunatly most would be considered work related. I put my jewelry first and centered my life around that. I was on a trip on the east coast back in 1995 and of course I always look in galleries and studies of jewelry makers in the area’s visited. I was with a friend from that area and we went to a gallery studio and talked to the artist jewelry maker owner. I could tell that she was not taking me very serious as a Silver smith jewelry maker. When we left, my friend made this statement, Jim she thinks you are a cowboy. Which from her New England snob approach was to say that us in the south west were not very good silver smiths and she looked down on us. I agreed with him and as soon as I got back to my studio I thought about that attitude and decided to put my work up fro the challenge and to prove through my work how I compared and my level of expertise. I did find in my trip from Washington state around the coast and up in to New England that not many silver smiths set stones. Most just worked the metal and then set little stones. But none had what I call “embraced the stone” as we do in the south west. Probably because we have the huge numbers of the turquoise and silver makers and artist’s. And the Indian silver smiths of course the center of this look
Well here is my Bracelet. I wanted when someone saw it to think Dam!! this is a silver smith, and even wonder, how it is even made. I wanted them to have to look at it and not even know how to make it, let alone the artistic talent in it. To make this bracelet obviously you need to cut your own stones to fit. And if you look at the stones you will find wide spread stone cutting expertise. There is Charolite , that stone is challenging in its self. Then you have a fire agate cut botryoidally around the many curves and bumps to cut it correctly. Fire agate is a stone that you can not cut with just one surface plane . You have to follow the fire over the bumps and into the valleys and crevices. Here is such a stone. There is a piece of my Lost Monte Cristo stone front and center. There is malachite and even fossil ivory. And on one side is a very special piece of Bisbee malachite and chrysocolla and azurite mix stone. There is even silver overlay on the front. And if all of this is difficult enough the very bracelet is built hollow. It is made up of many pieces of sheet silver that were precision cut and soldered together. Try making something hollow and you will find the trouble it gives you. But to make it even harder this is a massive bracelet and just soldering something of this size and weight is very difficult and requires very precise timing and eyes hand coordination. And for it to come out CLEAN with no solder splotches is amazing. I had to make 12 different bezels and solder each one on by itself. You can not even find one soldering connection on this bracelet. I was thinking of competing with this Bracelet in the Rio Grande Saul Bell award competition. Saul was a freind of mine anyway. For those of you that do not know, Saul Bell was the original founder of Rio Grande Jewelers supply. I thought it time to have one of his old friends win. But if not with this bracelet what is next in my designs. ???????
Copyright 2010 @ James Saunders