Happiness is hammering

There's a small collection of things that, since childhood, I've considered appealing. Stained glass, irridescent stones, symmetry, harmony, and chocolate are on the list. Another item that joined the group when I was in my early adulthood is metal with a hand-hammered surface texture. Copper pots, silver cuff bracelets, wrought iron pieces and other such objects look better to me with a hand-hammered surface. (I specify hand-hammering because I do not include the pieces that have obviously been shaped by machine into planes and facets imitating a hammered surface. Those are as attractive as ice masquerading as diamonds.) Around the house I have a few hand-hammered pieces, decorative and useful: a copper mold, some silver earrings, a brass cuff bracelet. A couple of years ago I acquired a round peen hammer and a stainless steel block, hoping to learn how to make jewelry with that same type of surface, but my few attempts were not successful. I used the tools for other purposes. Then, when I signed up for and attended the first of four jewelry making classes, I found Hope. No, Hope is not the instructor or a classmate but the glimmer of promise in my quest for creating hand-hammered jewelry.

Our first project is to design a pendant that will have a cabochon of our choice - selected from a collection that the instructor offered - in a bezel attached to it. We could use copper or, for an extra fee, silver. I decided to begin with copper until I had a good feel for the job and do a second project in silver if time permitted. Imagine my thrill when part of the first lesson was the demonstration of a variety of means of texturizing the metal to be used, one of those techniques being - you guessed it - hammering! My heart soared. The design that I made didn't come to me quickly, but I knew I wanted at least part of my piece to be hammered. It ended up having three surface textures: smooth, hammered, and almost a leather-looking texture that was created by running the copper plate and a piece of loosely woven fabric through a press. Of the three pieces to the pendant, the one I took greatest pleasure in making was, of course, the hammered part which runs the length of one edge of the piece. When I'm finished with it, which should be next Monday, I'll try to post a picture of it here, my first try at attaching an image to my Blogger posts.

As we were working, the instructor set up a laptop computer on which she displayed a slide show of former students' work. I noticed a simple pendant that I liked and would have done one like it if I'd been going for simple techniques the first time through. I'll do that another time. After mostly ignoring the display while I cut the three metal pieces, I watched it as I let my arms and hands rest, and I saw some really nice pieces made of hammered metals. A bracelet of loosely triangular pieces connected by pairs of rings and a matching toggle, a pair of shield-shaped earrings, a simple pendant of a rectangle of texturized metal at the top that flowed down into a plain polished surface, and more. At the end of the class I spoke with the instructor who said oh yes, all of those were very doable, mostly because there was no soldering involved in any of the pieces I showed her. Hooray!! I think I've finally found a little niche for myself: having the ability to hand hammer plate metal to make jewelry that I deeply enjoy, and having an activity that allows me to vent not only artistic but occupational tensions in a very productive way. Woo hoo!