Onyx and faceted citrine necklace and petrified coral pendant.

Bluebird Mine turquoise and tangerine pearl necklace, chrysocolla and

cuprite pendant.

THE QUILL IS PREPARING FOR A SHOW

Fox Mine turquoise, onyx, vintage frangia coral, vintage coral pendant.
Bronzite and vintage frangia coral.

Bronzite, mookaite and citrine.



Bronzite, mookaite, and jasper pendant with gold keishi pearls and onyx.

The mix

POSSIBILITIES

It is not easy to be frivolous in today's economy. It is almost impossible for evolving greenies to think of the implications of rampant consumerism. As a part time jewelry designer, I have struggled with the matter of adding non essentials to a world already clogged with the flotsam of acquisitive societies. Then, I agonized over the materials I use to make jewelry. For example, how were the gemstones mined, were workers exploited in order to produce the gemstones I buy? Is it ethical to use pre-ban ivory and vintage coral? I worried about the political prisoners who process Chinese gemstones and the Myanmar jade miners who allegedly live in squalor and whose wages are paid in opium. I reached such a pitch of moral indignation that a friend commented, only half facetiously, that I would soon have to limit myself to digging up rocks from my yard and smelting my own metal in order to make sure that no one but I suffered in the process.

My friend was right. Moral indignation is all very well, but I cannot allow it to paralyse me. Jewelry does not exist to solve global problems. Rather, it exists to satisfy the ancient urge for adornment. This seemingly frivolous urge will not go away if I take myself too seriously. People will buy jewelry whether I make or not. Ergical people will try to find out whether the product they buy was made under conditions that caused damage to people and to the ecology. In this, as in most situations, what I need to do is take the middle ground. I will not buy Burma jade, but will I have to take in trust that Canadian jade miners are reasonably well treated. I will not buy so-called crystal --read glass--beads from China unless I know that the workers who made them were issued the shields and respirators that protect their eyes and lungs. I can do much of the basic silversmithing needed to produce findings--the doodads required to put a piece of jewelry together, i.e. , head pins, jump rings and the like. It is highly unlikely that a Balinese silversmith will loose his job as a consequence. Naturally, as a First World worker I demand higher payment than the downtrodden masses of the Third World. My clients take that into consideration.

That is not surprising. Americans usually pay well for skilled work when required to do so. I charge twenty eight dollars an hour to to repair work--my contention is that I can turn out a new piece of jewelry worth 300 dollars within the same time frame. Plus, that was the going rate five years ago. So far none of my clients has complained. True, their number is minuscule since I do not advertise or do any of the fancy marketing required to "grow a business." I work at home except for doing a small number of shows in the metropolitan DC area. I make my own schedule. I have the luxury of being able to respect my work, frivolous or not. That is what I call happiness.

Rhodocrosite, coin pearls and fabricated 925 silver and keishi pearl flower pendant, 925 findings.

Gold Keishi pearls, topaz and bronzite necklace, 925 findings.. Mazie doat Jack.

Curious Jack.

Two bees or not to bees...

Flutterby

LA VIRGINIE PROFONDE

We have been there, visiting friends who own a Victorian farmhouse, goats, peach and apple trees, and a pond complete with snapping turtle. They gave us us gave us a gorgeous lunch, good conversation, a story about the Confederate ghosts who haunts their house, and a peek into a way of life to which we would like to become accustomed--particularly the goatie part.
We found a buyer for a bronzite and rhodocrosite necklaces, which would have been cause for celebration had we home not lost Junior's cell phone somewhere in deepest Virginia. Result, Junior gets a new cell phone and my wallet gets leaner by a hundred dollars. At this rate, I had better make more jewelry. Fast.

Bronzite, faceted smoky quartz, and mookaite for inspiration.

WIP--Chrysoprase beads and silver necklace.

THINK GLOBALLY?

Sometimes one has the urge to torch things. At such times, it helps a great deal if one remembers to have one's propane torches filled up and ready to go. That is something I failed to do and to complicate matters, my butane torch, the workhorse of my jewelry making adventures, went kaput. There is always the scary hot MAPP gas torch which I use for serious stuff, like reticulation, but it is no fun to use on hot and humid days. The thing to do then is get beady. Today, I am making silver leaves that will be dapped and hammered to form a necklace along with chrysoprase beads. I am not quite sure whether this design is the one I want. I could use silver beads and add cabochons--perhaps opal or moonstone--the the leaves. That would call for soldering and soldering calls for a new butane torch. It seems that I will have to buy one anyway. In order to dangle gracefully, those leaves need soldered findings--loops. Drilling the top of the leaf and inserting a wire loop might work too. I will experiment.

Against my better judgement, I agreed to do a show in Maryland, in autumn. Junior is all for it. Her homemade soap and felted bags are usually a hit and she gets to meet other artisans. My jewelry is too expensive for country fairs and at best I sell half a dozen pieces. The good thing is that a couple of the buyers might become loyal patrons, returning to commission new projects. All in all, we artisans work for the love of the craft. Few of us are able to leave their day jobs and yet we persist, knowing that we are competing with ill-paid Third Word craftspeople for whom a dollar an hour an acceptable salary. My hometown has a silver shop that sells jewelry made in Bali and India and the Smithsonian sells quilts made in China. I am not sure who benefits from globalization. Perhaps it is good that the Balinese, Indians get paid a dollar an hour. I have slightly higher overhead and therefore I need a better salary that is better than that. Perhaps it is ethical to buy inexpensive crafts made by Chinese political prisoners whose working conditions would give OSHA inspector cardiac arrest. You get decide; Third World craftspeople usually cannot.

The ideal, Better Home and Gardens.

The reality, my craft room.

The ideal, from Better Homes and Gardens. The reality, my writing room.

Sterling silver pin with citrine briolet, pearls and garnets

STRANGE ATTRACTORS ?

"Control of chaos is the stabilization, by means of small system perturbations, of one of these unstable periodic orbits. The result is to render an otherwise chaotic motion more stable and predictable, which is often an advantage. The perturbation must be tiny, to avoid significant modification of the system's natural dynamics."


I think of in German, machen ordnung, to make order. It is a brutal process that requires a brutal language. Basically I have to tear a place apart before I can rearrange in a way that allows me to use for a certain purpose. In this case, the space is my study, the place where I use to conduct interviews and write, back when I worked for commercial newspapers. After I decided to write for non-profit organisations, I moved my writing quarters to another room and remade my former office into a silversmith's office.

Formally trained silversmiths usually have immaculate work spaces. They arrange their jeweller's benches according to an age old pattern. That makes sense. Much of silversmithing is precise work. It requires orderly surroundings. many silversmithing tools are delicate and expensive. Some rust easily and it does not do to neglect them.

Having said that, I will admit to keeping my bench in an apparent state of chaos. That is, to a trained silversmith my bench looks like a pigsty. Yet I can find my tools blindfolded. It is true that I have only killed two sets of aviation grade cutters, but that happened over a period of eight years and I have learnt not to use them to hold piece of silver I am heating wth a MAPP (liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) mixed with methylacethylene-propadiene) gas torch. The combustion temperature of MAPP gas 5300 °F ( 2927 °C ), great for melting silver and one's good, expensive aviation cutters.

Here and there I make a piece of jewelry that makes someone happy. It is a skill to have. Writing is cleaner, but the creative process is no sweeter than making a drawing and rendering it into metal. I practice both crafts in rooms where there must be some order--my kind of order, not decorator magazine's prissy, photographable prettiness. See for yourself.