Inspiration is everywhere

Flowers and foliage from the garden

I was contacted back in January by Caroline, to see if we could arrange a bespoke silver clay workshop. Having tried silversmithing in the past and found it to be too heavy on her hands, she was hoping that working with silver clay might be a more accessible option.

Caroline came along in February, bringing lots of inspiration with her including jewellery pieces, craft stamps and textures, stones and some plants from her garden. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of using each of them, and what would work best and why. She settled on exploring the use of the plant material in two ways: by pressing a beautifully delicate fern directly into the clay to leave an imprint and by making a mould of the daisy to form a relief of the flower head.

Caroline decided to make earrings first. She rolled out her clay and impressed the fern, making the left side earring and then the right. By making them separately, she had control over her design and could almost mirror the way the fern fell across each side. The hearts were then left to dry before being refined and torch fired.

Caroline’s earrings.

Whilst the earrings were drying, we made a mould of one of the daisies. Caroline intended to make a pendant and wanted a substantial piece, so despite having over half her original pack of clay left, she bought a bit more and used it all to push into the daisy mould. When the clay was removed, we had a finely detailed daisy flower, positioned centrally on a slightly irregular circle. Caroline decided to work with this and rather than cutting away the background with a circle cutter, she left it to dry and then gently sanded her piece to leave an organic shape. This is the daisy, straight out of the kiln, ready for polishing. It’s sitting on a bed of vermiculite which supports it during the firing process.

Caroline’s daisy pendant, fresh out of the kiln.

The great thing about hand polishing your silver, is that you can highlight areas you want to draw attention to, by polishing them to a high shine. Areas of ‘background’ can also be polished, but to a lesser degree. Although it’s difficult to see in the image below, Caroline polished the petals to an almost mirror finish whilst the background and centre disk were left ‘quieter’. It’s a stunning piece.

Caroline’s final piece.