Two in One
Sometimes, you get asked to do some really neat things, and I don’t just mean generically whacking at stuff with a hammer. A wonderful friend of mine, Heather, was recently awarded not just one, but two of the highest honors in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group we’re both involved in. One was the Order of the Laurel, which recognizes people for their mastery in arts and sciences. The other was the award of the Sapphire, a kingdom-specific accolade for courtesy, grace, and “embodying the dream,” and came with the royal gift of a lovely emerald-cut sapphire. Heather asked me to create a piece to incorporate both awards, and once I stopped squeeing, I gladly agreed to the challenge!
I am still very much a baby metalsmith in my own mind. My first classes were sometime in 2007 or 2008, at my local community college with an amazingly passionate teacher, Suzanne. Although my choice to take a metalsmithing class was considered by some to be on par with underwater basket weaving, (an additional accounting series was suggested instead) Suzanne lit a metaphorical fire under my rump and I decided I liked pounding on things until they got pretty, but I had to set it aside for the realities of daily life. I did Other Stuff (including that accounting series) for a number of years until another friend, CJ, shared his exciting enamel class pictures one afternoon in late 2017. I said “ha ha, I should try that,” he said “you really should, let me talk to the teacher,” and here we are.
So I’ve really only been doing this a bare few years, and the sweat popped out when I agreed to do the Sapphaurel, as I started calling it. Yeah, I could do it, but it was going to be a challenge! Good! After some ridiculously interminable medical delays, I settled down to start, and created several sketches. We chatted back and forth about what she wanted most, and I considered what I could actually do, and we settled on a final design: a champlevé-enameled oval in pure silver with a laurel wreath, supporting a riveted top plate with the Sapphire and two accent garnet cabochons.
Once we settled on the plan, I got to work fabricating the piece. The first thing I did was create the settings for the stones, since those were the one set of dimensions I couldn’t really change. Once the settings existed, I measured and pierced out a smaller top plate to hold the settings, and two larger backplates to be fused together into the enameled body of the pendant. Rivets tucked under the garnets would hold the two pieces together. After piercing out and smoothing the ovals, I pricked out and pierced the holes that would become the laurel leaves.
Fusing fine silver is a process rather different from soldering metals together. To solder, you heat your metal carefully and melt a tiny bit of another, softer metal alloy into place, almost like using glue. In fusing, you heat the pieces of metal right past red hot, and up to the very point of melting entirely. The skin of each piece of metal will suddenly flash into a liquid in the last split-second, and if you’re very fast and very careful, you can freeze and meld those liquid outer skins into one integrally solid piece of metal in a nervous instant, without slumping or wrecking the whole. There’s a little chemistry involved to coax the process along, but mostly it’s a lot of heat and prayer. And maybe some swearing. This time, everything went smoothly, and the two pieces of silver for the back plate were neatly fused into one piece of metal with little cut-out spots for the leaves. I domed the piece for strength, soldered on rings to hold the desired pearls (we’d moved up to three) and engraved the little leaves so they would sparkle under the glass.
Enameling is my happy place. Don’t get me wrong, I love metal completely, but being able to do pirouettes in color just pleases my inner magpie to no end. Being able to settle in and finally start the heart of the wreath was incredibly satisfying, especially after all the delays I’d had medically. I was very aware of time steadily ticking away, but I wanted to take my time and do it all correctly. I had selected four different shades of leaded glass enamel to create the leaves, and now I started washing and preparing them for wet packing.
Wet packing transparent enamels is a study in patience. If you layer things too thickly, you get cracks and cloudiness. If you don’t wash the enamel diligently, you get clouds and specks. And if you don’t dry it adequately before each firing of the dozen or so, you can get little steam explosions that poof the glass powder right out of position and all over the place. Again, I was fortunate enough to dodge all this, and set it aside for the next morning, for finishing!
Or so I thought.
On rising the next morning, I went to my bench to inspect the piece for the day’s grinding ahead, and started swearing fit to curdle water. I had planned to leave the back metal bare, domed, and polished to a mirror finish, since there was so little glass on the front, and the metal was so heavy. We had chuckled about it being an emergency firestarter and vampire-slayer. Instead, physics reasserted itself rudely and reminded me that you just can’t skimp on the basics - I absolutely had to counter enamel the backplate to balance even the minimal stresses of the glass on the front of it, or the enamel would inevitably chip and fall out. I cussed. I stomped my feet. I cried. I messaged Heather, admitted to my mistake, and immediately got the okay to restart the whole process. So I did just that. Fortunately, the top plate with the stone settings was still perfectly fine and didn’t need to be redone, I just had to match dimensions and curvature precisely.
Round two went MUCH faster, of course, since I had already done most of the problem-solving. We ditched a planned pin catch and went back with an integrated bail, and the three loops below were pierced out of the back sheet of the backplate. I pierced, fused, domed, engraved, and pre-finished the backplate, and got back to enamelling. This time I added several layers of a harder green glass on the backside, and again set it aside. Paranoia ensued, and I waited a few extra days and then went after it every way I knew how to stress test it. It passed! I cured any stresses I had created in the testing, and checked everything one more time. It was time to assemble and polish it!
I can say that I really enjoyed the riveting process, except for the actual riveting part itself. I created the rivets from sterling wire to fit the countersunk holes in the back, and split and bent the front ends sideways to lie flat underneath the garnets. The nervy part was crafting a tiny anvil out of a chasing punch to support the backside of the rivet, surrounded by glass, while I carefully hammered the split ends flat on the front. I only had the two hands and needed at least six, so there are no pix, but I got it done! At long last, it was time to layer in some gold foil, set the garnets, and then tuck the sapphire into place. I dinged the metal twice getting the bezels smoothed down so I had to take those marks back out, but the mirror finish really shone through. Heather decided on the pearls she liked best, and I strung those and a little accent garnet onto their little loops. Another good visit to the polishing buffs, and it was ready to be strung up, boxed, and shipped out to its forever home!
Of course, no story is complete without a good nail-biter of an ending. I insist on insuring any packages to the hilt in case of catastrophe, and was immensely grateful I had done so when the package took a seven-state detour after arriving in her very own town! We both bit our nails and watched anxiously as it made its way back to where it had been in the first place, but when it finally got to her, she dialed me up and opened it on a video call with me. There was squeeing, on both ends. There were tears, on both ends. It was perfect.
The privilege of doing this piece, for this person, for these reasons, was absolutely immense, and it was a delight and an honor to be asked. I can only hope that it brings her decades of smiles knowing that hers is a pair of accolades well-earned and entirely deserved. And very, very shiny!