Many people jump into the process of making jewelry and take shortcuts that only hurt them in the long run. Maybe they buy tools and supplies that don’t give them the results they’re looking for. Or they don’t treat their new tools right. Or perhaps they’re worried that their great new “original” design will make [...]
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We find enjoyment, it is true, in the agreeable green of grass and leaves, but incomparably greater is the pleasure of beholding an emerald; for its green is the most satisfying of all,” so Pliny extolled the aristocratic chieftain of the beryl family. Nevertheless, the reader has the feeling that even Pliny, despite his telling [...]
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A few years ago a hitherto unknown and unusually interesting occurrence was discovered in Tanzania supplying green, so-called prase, opal, which owes its color to a small nickel content derived from weathered serpentine. Since the opal here, as in all the other localities, crops out relatively near the earth’s surface in fairly easily workable rocks, [...]
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Agate—diversely beautiful, multicolored, and variously formed as it is, its endless abundance of abstract designs can only be hinted at by the descriptions “spotted, cloudy, marbled, banded, or dappled.” To the ancient Greeks and Romans it was already known in the form of colored pebbles collected from the Achates River in Sicily.
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The interest of its gnarled banding, which unlike most other ornamental stones is not multicolored but patterned throughout in contrasting shades of light to dark green, has earned malachite many admirers. In ancient times it was likened to the innumerable green shades of mallow leaves.
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The display by malachite in its captivating symphony of greens is repeated by rhodochrosite (Greek rhodon = rose; chros = flesh color) on an equally grand scale in rose-red alternations. The latter is no less prolific in original designs of convoluted banding; with unflagging inventiveness it imprints its patterns in light and dark pink tones. [...]
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During the Flower Power era, the renewed interest in Asia and the Far East led to a return to natural materials such as bone, ivory and Indian metalwork. Western jewelers were influenced by the varied assortment of goods being imported from Asia, and leather thong jewelry hung with dyed feathers and wooden beads typified the [...]
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Artist-jewelers in Britain in the seventies gained two new means by which to promote their work. One was the opening of an important retail outlet, Electrum, in London. The other was the establishment of the Crafts Advisory Committee, later renamed the Crafts Council. This was set up in 1971 to promote and develop the importance [...]
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The Bauhaus continued to influence art and design establishments throughout Europe, particularly in Britain and Holland, during this period. Designers searched for forms that would be minimalist, universal and democratic. Artists and craftsmen saw themselves as ‘pioneers who were liberating the world from the bonds of tradition’. Studio Crafts were established in art schools in [...]
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Wendy Ramshaw is an artist-jeweler who has been making jewelry since the late 1960s in a variety of precious and non-precious materials from paper, Perspex and wood to I8ct gold. She has stated recently that:
‘I enjoy looking at jewelry and I enjoy wearing jewelry. These are, in simple terms, the real reasons why I am [...]
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