This is a detail of a blackened silver brooch I made a while back. Its all hand fabricated, rather than a cast burn-out of a real plant... I snipped the buds out of really thin sheet with little scissors and then scored texture on them with a pin. They are about 5 to 8mm across. Can you see the fine, grainy texture in the stems and so on? ( click to enlarge) This is done by heating up the silver 'til the surface is just melting- flashing- then at that exact moment, sprinkling on silver dust! The dust fuses to the momentarily molten surface! Yikes! ( its tricky- you might melt the whole lot, the sheet is ≈0.1 mm thick dude!) ( just incase you thought I wasnt much good)
While I might be congratulating myself on this technical prowess, in Actuality, I havent been able to get any one to buy this piece, so it has been languishing in a box... in my workshop... for ages... maybe its too delicate? sigh.
I would love to see a full shot of this!
ReplyDeleteSo beautiful! Have you ever done a piece with fused gold dust, would that work as well?
ReplyDeleteCarlolyn- yes, a carated gold would work, or in pure gold, but then you would have to do diffusion bonding instead. (paint the surface with a copper salt (malachite powder would possibly work?), stick the dust on with an organic glue, heat it up; the glue burns off/ copper salt melts/ creates awesomely small bond!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is so beautiful David, I love it...aren't you getting clever in your older age!
ReplyDeleteWell done.
this is lovely. and SO delicate!
ReplyDeleteI love this! amazing!
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