Easy Being Green + The Difference Between Filigree & Granulation
After months of waiting, all is green again here. Kermit might have found green a challenging color to be, but I revel in my fully tree-canopied yard. I literally can’t get enough of looking up at the vivid blue sky through the lush leaves of my giant water oaks.
Ok, so I’ve all but given up keeping up with skimming the remaining oak flowers out of my fish pond or removing them from my dogs’ fluffy tails, pantaloons, and bellies. Oak flowers are nature’s Velcro. Still, it beats the heck out of winter!
In celebration of spring and as a respite from the ongoing digital work for my 35th anniversary retrospective, I’ve spent some time playing at the bench. I’m a huge advocate of creative play and insist that not everything needs to end up as a finished work of art. Some things are meant to be experiments and ‘sketches’ in metal, yes, even with silver at nearly $30 per troy ounce. Unlike the paper of a sketch you might not be happy with, precious metal can always be reclaimed.
I share this bit of wisdom often with my students. We put so much pressure on ourselves to turn every moment in the studio into something shareable, wearable, or sellable that it can actually take away from skill building or increased creativity. I confess it’s a bit of a bonus and a thrill when those experiments do work out they way I hope…and are sometimes worth the follow-through to turn them into finished pieces.
My recent experiments in granulation have been, as ever, inspired by centuries-old metalwork, but leveled up with current technology. The urge to combine beaded and round wires have been nagging at me since I saw the Staffordshire Hoard last December, but of course, I’m never one to copy.
In a combination of sheet, beaded wire, round wire, and good old saliva with an electric hydraulic press and a micro-TIG welder, followed by the rustic fusing of fire, metal, and nothing else, I bring you my latest bit of play. It’s not a ring yet, but the odds are good that it, or another of its kin, will be one soon.
There is still time and a few slots remaining to get into my Granulation Rings online course that starts this week.
Yes! I will be sharing how I did this process too!
Granulation Rings will have you wielding fire like a pro and will also have you in fine fusing form for my Granulation & Keum Boo Beads online course later this fall.
Ever wonder what is the difference between filigree and granulation?
The terms often get used interchangeably by curators and historians because granulation can have swirly spirals of wire, and filigree can be topped with tiny granules. I get it; it’s confusing!
The difference is that filigree is soldered to itself or to a back sheet, but granulation is fused without the use of solder to join the spheres or wires to a base sheet, regardless of the design style. Soldering means using an alloy with a lower melting temperature to join parts together. Fusing means using enough heat to join parts together that they literally melt into each other. Melting is not something most jewelers and metalsmiths aspire to do. In fact, most of the time the goal is NOT to melt things. Fusing, is that magic moment when things melt together without melting into one big ball.
Can filigree and granulation be combined?
You bet!
The trick is in understanding the order of things according to The Laws of Fire.
What are The Laws of Fire, you ask! Well, it’s my made up, fancy term for acquiring a working knowledge of the various temperatures at which you can join bits of metal to each other, and how to form and fabricate them before and afterwards. It’s all about understanding what happens in what order so you can mix things up. This is a huge part of what I empower students with so they can make the work of their dreams, whether contemporary or inspired from antiquity. Trust me, once you get it, you’ve got it, and you’ll be unstoppable with a torch.
My apologies to my international customers!
DHL has decided to make my life hell by suddenly charging me outrageous prices to ship internationally. When I say outrageous, I mean literally over $200 to ship to some countries in Europe that used to only cost $45. I’m working to find cost effective alternatives that don’t take 2+ weeks like the US Postal Service does to deliver. In the meantime, if you’re planning to order my Eastern Repoussé Tool Sets or my Russian Filigree Powdered Solder for shipping outside the USA, you can find them at Rio Grande. They don’t carry my Russian Filigree Frame and Filler Wires, and obviously, they don’t sell my artwork.
Online courses are no problem to sign up for through my site, since there’s nothing to ship. Thanks for your patience while I sort out international shipping again!
