Hey All,
I don’t know about all of you, but the coming of spring is definitely reawakening my creative juices, and so I’m considering getting back into making a little jewelry for fun. I was going through and cleaning up my old jewelry making bench today and I found a couple of old photos of some of my early creations. I’ve gotten a lot better at the jewelry work over the years, but these two earlier pieces have still always been some of my favorites.
The first one is a pierced and repose’ sterling silver and three colors of 18k gold hand fabricated Celtic bracket with a shaped and polished meteor for a stone.

I wanted to capture the art of my ancestors so I alloyed my own gold from nuggets I panned and hand pounded it into sheets, then I drew out the design and pierced (sawed) all of the individual pieces out (about sixty of them) and then soldered them all back together one by one to create the changing of colors as the knot work weaves. Then I used a bowl of pitch and little hammers to shape the various fauna and flora, and then hand engraved and carved the detail.

The meteor which I found, was utilized to bring the energy of the heavens together with the precious metals of the earth to add something of an “out of this world ” effect to the piece.
The second piece is a sterling silver and three colors of gold, cloak broach with a ruby cut into a flame.
Unfortunately, the colors of gold and the ruby did not show up well on this photo, but the dragons transition from silver to yellow to green.

It will be a while before I can actually find some time to sit down at the bench again, but I can feel that old creative itch nagging at me to make something.
In any case, I just thought I’d share.

Happy Spring 🙂
Patrick McCollum