Most of our workdays are spent making jewelry we have already designed.
Paul and I have been making jewelry full time for more than 20 years, and we have a weekly production quota that we try to maintain. It keeps our regular designs in stock, helps us stay ahead for our busier seasons, and keeps our little two-person business going.
I am incredibly grateful that this is what we get to do every day. But it also means that making time to work on completely new ideas has to be pretty deliberate.
And I am forever trying to figure out the best way to do that.
If I take time away from production when I know I am behind on my quota, there is always that little voice reminding me that I should probably be making the things I actually need to make. Not exactly ideal conditions for freely experimenting with something that may or may not turn into anything.
So this summer I had a plan.
I worked extra hard for a couple of weeks and built up a little bank of production ahead of time. That gave me an entire week where my quota was essentially already done. I could go into the studio, play around and make absolutely nothing useful if that was where the day took me.
No pressure!
Except, of course, I immediately replaced the pressure to produce with the pressure to come up with something brilliant LOL.
I had worked so hard to create all this free time that suddenly it felt like I needed to DO SOMETHING with it. I should have a big idea. I should make something completely different. I should come up with something I had never done before.
Creativity, unfortunately, does not seem particularly interested in my schedule. And this mentality really left me floundering to create anything at all.
Slowing Everything Down
I decided to stop worrying about whether an idea was new enough and focus instead on something I knew how to do: make jewelry really well.
I pulled out some stones I had been saving because they were unusual, a little more expensive, or simply special enough that I hadn't figured out what I wanted to do with them yet. Instead of thinking about embellishment or trying to make the design itself complicated, I slowed everything way down and focused on the craftsmanship.
I made heavier silver settings. I thought about how each stone should sit and what would make it look its best. And when a regular chain didn't feel substantial enough for a pendant, I started making the chains too.
I put an audiobook in my headphones and got into a groove making chains by hand one silver link at a time. Cut the links. Connect them. Weld every link closed. Shape them by hand. Make the clasp. Keep going.
It is incredibly slow work, which was sort of the point.
And somewhere in all of that, I stopped trying so hard to be creative.
Which, naturally, is when something really cool happened.
A Pile of Scrap Silver
I save my silver scraps. Little pieces of wire, trimmings from sheet, bits cut away while I'm making something else. They can be melted down and eventually worked back into usable silver.
One day I was melting some of those scraps together when I happened to look down at exactly the right moment.
The pieces had started fusing together, but they hadn't completely melted into one solid mass yet. There were thicker areas and thin lines, little openings and irregular shapes. It looked almost like coral or branches or ripples in water. Nothing literal, just this really interesting organic little silver sculpture.
I tried to see if I could do it again.
That turned out to be much harder than I expected. The whole process is incredibly serendipitous. You can arrange the silver and control the flame, but once everything starts to melt, the metal is going to move the way it wants to move.
A lot of my attempts weren't interesting at all. Those went right back under the torch and became silver balls to use another day.
But every once in a while I would pull the flame away and think, Oh. That's something.
Those pieces went into a little pile.
And suddenly the week I had carved out for experimenting turned into another week because I was completely absorbed in figuring out what these strange pieces of silver wanted to become.
From Silver Scraps to Sculptural Rings
At first, I really didn't know what I was making.
I started hammering the pieces, adding texture, taking things away, adding more silver and shaping them in different directions. Once I began curving one of the pieces, I slipped it over my finger to see what would happen.
And there it was.
It was a ring!
That was the moment this whole idea really clicked for me.
The melted silver had a thickness and dimension that felt completely different on the hand. Once curved, those organic shapes wrapped around the finger in this really beautiful way. They felt solid and substantial, but all of the open areas kept them from looking like a traditional heavy, wide silver band.
From there I just kept playing.
Some got double bands. Some got spirals. I added melted silver balls to a few. Some pieces needed stones, some did not. I would make something, put it on, stare at it, change it, take something away, add something else and keep going until I got that feeling of, Yes. There it is.
That part of designing has never gotten particularly fast for me. I find I usually need to make it wrong the first time and then go from there. Meandering around for a bit before I have that hell yeah! moment.
These sculptural rings in particular became some of my favorite pieces from this entire group. There is no mold or pattern to recreate them. The original form came from the silver melting together under the torch, so even when I deliberately tried to repeat the process, every single one came out differently.
And Then the Pile Started Growing
Normally, I make a few new things and then stop.
I photograph them, take videos, write the listings, put them online and eventually start making something else.
This time I just...kept making.
I was having too much fun.
The little pile of finished jewelry waiting to be photographed became a slightly bigger pile. And then a considerably bigger pile as Paul added some too, we just kept thinking of new ideas!
I kept telling myself I would photograph it later.
And this is where the reality of running a two-person business becomes a little funny. There isn't another department I hand the finished jewelry to when I'm done making it.
I am also the photographer.
And the person taking the videos.
And the person writing the listings.
And, when you see a photo showing how a necklace hangs or how earrings look on a person, I am the model lol.
So there is inevitably a day when I have to put down the torch, do my hair and attempt to become all of those people.
This particular pile took me about three weeks to work through while we were also keeping up with our regular production. Photographing everything, taking videos, measuring, weighing, writing listings and finally getting all of these pieces online was a much bigger undertaking than I had envisioned while happily adding one more thing to the pile all summer.
But now it is done.
And I am beyond excited to finally share all of it.
There are pieces in this collection that began with stones I had been saving for years. There are chains made link by link completely by hand. There are experiments that started with scrap silver under a torch and became something I never could have planned in advance.
And I think that might be my favorite part of this whole experience.
