Salt formations in my quench pot

The water evaporated in my quench pot and left salts in the water to form amazing patters around few silver drops.

I put soldered pieces in the water before it goes in the pickle pot to quench them.  The water is also used after pickle cleaning to remove the acid from the pieces. 

Pickel is a water diluted acid solution to remove oxides on precious metals produced from heating and soldering as well as glassy flux residues. When I cast new jewelry they come out black since the silver is covered with oxidation. Putting them in the heated pickle for a couple minutes removed all the oxidation and leaves them white.

RAW Inspiration : FOLDS

I am trying to get my head really into the RAW project and set some parameters before I design my first ring.  I decided to treat this project a bit different than how I usually design my jewelry and return more to the conceptual design that I learned in architecture school. Most of my other ring designs are influenced by gem stones I own. Once I play with a stone the ring shape usually materialized without ever sketching anything on paper. I use a very intuitive sculpting of the wax around the stone until I am satisfied wit the sculpture in my hand.
For RAW I am using CAD software to model it and print the rings in stainless steel or plastic. With that I want to explore more the formal aspect of form and shape and forgo using gem stones altogether. That won't be easy as I love those pretty starkly treasures of nature. But I believe the return to simple shapes and forms will be a great reward. And no one says I can't do variations of those shapes by incorporating gem stones later on.

I wrote down some themes I want to explore a bit more with my ring designs in the next 52 weeks. Some themes will last for multiple weeks until I am done with them or they will morph into each other.

The first one will be FOLDS.
Here some inspirational images I found on flickr.

1. Folded, 2. The Town School, 3. milwaukee museum of art, 4. green glasses in folds, 5. Chelsea Modern, 6. Folds, 7. Folded Spike, 8. jorge ayala/ folded surfaces (6), 9. Dress, 10. Fin_Shelter_07.jpg, 11. Folded, 12. the bends, 13. inner folds, 14. Habitat Egg - 4 Views, 15. folding facade, 16. 3 spine concertina fold, 17. stri_06, 18. Edificio Av. Mexico - detail, 19. Curved Fold Study, 20. garden inspiration, 21. ARKTURA_Flow Bench 2, 22. （Neil Denari）, 23. 2006 09.24 | Neil Denari - Endeavor Screening Room, 24. Textured Panel with Window, 25. Folded rock, 26. Folds, 27. Red rock folds, 28. Folded by Air, 29. Facetious from another angle, 30. bracelet cuff, 31. a land not mine, 32. Eyelash Viper (Bothriechis schlegeli, Greifschwanzlanzenotter), 33. voluptuous curves, 34. Satin steel, 35. Origami Romanesco, 36. on the window sill




Other themes for the next few weeks are:

• slices
• tubes
• surface deformations
• cellular/organic patterns
• nesting 
• growth
• chaos
• moire
• mikado
• screens
• interlocking
• flow - water - ripples
• bubbles
• hives
• roots
• branches

I am really getting excited about this project. I am hoping to post the first ring design on Sunday. I am still software challenged but hope to figure it out. Stay tuned.

Fall Colors on Metal

I just came back from my morning walk with the dogs and was inspired by all those beautiful fall colors out there: pumpkins on every porch, crazy Halloween decorations, colored Maple leaves on the concrete sidewalk, Bird of Paradise flowers with Hummingbirds over them and to top it all, a beautiful blue sky and sunshine. So I created my first ever Treasury list on Etsy: "Fall Colors on Metal".

It's a lot of fun browsing through the items of other amazing metal artist on the site. But it's  also very time consuming. With that I have to go back to the studio to work and be productive. Since I haven't bought any candy yet, I will have to hide in the back with the lights out to avoid all the trick-or-treating :)

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