Damask Dragons

Now this was my final jewellery project of the year. And actually probably the most difficult one. Maybe not the most technically challenging, as that honour belongs to my tiny crash helmets, but certainly the project I had the most trouble getting my head around.

As you may have noticed, I rather like baroque style and vintage wallpaper, and have been basing a lot of designs around this. Having promised a friend that I would make some earrings as a Christmas present for his girlfriend in return for hooking me up with a pro photographer, I duly emailed him my designs. He came back with "Oooh, like that but a bit more dragony please". "Hmmm, interesting..." I thought. "Dragons..."

Now, I kind of suck at making things look like other things, hence my trepidation and slight procrastination of this project. I needed to find a way to keep the feel of the original design, and also make it look a bit dragony without looking, well, crap really.

So, armed with my sketchbook and pencils, I set off for a distraction-free weekend chilling out with my mum. After many hours of drawing and squinting at swirly shapes, I managed to come up with something I thought looked kind of cool, and happily the friend agreed, so I set to work. And this was the result:

I think they actually turned out pretty awesome. This is my favourite kind of metalwork to do, starting with a blank piece of sheet silver and slowly piercing out and carving the edges of the design. I can happily sit at my workbench for hours merrily sawing away. Some days you can go through corners and points for ever without breaking a single sawblade, other days you can break five of them in two minutes, just sawing a straight line.

Again, I've been indecisive about the photography style and have also done one on an earring bust just to show the scale.


So, I guess the lesson learned was that sometimes it's good to be dragged begrudgingly from your comfort zone, as what you end up creating could well be one of your favourite pieces...