A friend of mine and fellow goldsmith Toni Tischer launched her new website today, www.tischerstudios.com. Toni has found a way to to have ownership to her brand and style of anticlastic raising. She has worked with me for almost 20 years and has been developing a style of her own using anticlastic raising. Toni is doing things with the technique I have never seen done before. While I use multiple elements in my work, Toni does that and further enhances the piece by then adding dangling, moving, spinning gemstones, pearls and sometimes other metal forms within the jewelry pieces. She works in Argentium Sterling Silver, Mokume Gane and all karats of gold. She is one of a very few artists doing anticlastic raising in Sterling Silver. You really need to give this site a look. Her work is remarkable. She has found a way to make the technique her own. Many of the prominent craftsmen using this technique have developed a look of their own, including Michael Good, Britt Anderson, Tim Grannis, Debra Richardson, and myself (Jerry Scavezze). Toni is about to be added to that list. Lead, Follow or get out of the way. Toni is leading. Do yourself a favor, check it out!
A friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in months and months dropped by the other day. It was show and tell: He has been working on some new pieces, some mouth watering luscious stones. His creative use of color gives him that illusive edge we all desire. This personage would be Michael Boyd, of course. His work is always an inspiration, the way he plays with color like paint on a canvas…. ok enough of that. So my thoughts today revolve around design, color and stones. As jewelers or contemporary metalsmiths we all know that once you learn the rules you must discard them. Throw out any rule that stands in the way, in favor of what will make that stone stop a heart. Michael’s work is a living breathing example of just that. I have seen him take very inexpensive or found objects and put them together with very expensive objects and create the illusion that they have and always will belong together. Set that diamond upside down if it is necessary or create a new way to suspend a stone from a chain. Awareness of color and texture, weight, line, the power of positive and negative space and above all the sense of play.
The fine art of incorporating a stone into the design so that color and texture and line make you believe the stone was born there not just stuck on the surface is a continuing battle for me. It forces me to continually add to my bucket of skills and to push my patience. Jewelers have to fight the time battle either real or imagined. I certainly am no exception to the age old controversy about art, time and materials. Nonetheless, only time with the materials and the tools will give you the skills to produce what you see in you minds eye. Another age old story; you have to learn the rules before you can discard them. There is so much to learn and after 18 years, I am still a beginner. After Michael’s visit I am now inspired to go play in my studio not just work. Jewelers and stones, stones and jewelers it will ever be thus.
Some of us are stone junkies some of us are tool junkies I raise my hand and admit that I am both. We neglect the linoleum in the kitchen in favor of a new tool or maybe those rocks we just couldn’t turn down at the gem fair. I have a friend, an art patron who has been buying jewelry and art objects for years. She is a junkie. She has been fighting the disease by ordering custom pieces and having changes made in the jewelry she has bought. Finally she is jumping in and has now started buying tools. She is tired of trying to communicate her ideas to other craftsmen. Soon to be retired she can now start taking classes and workshops learning the rules so she can break them. It was inevitable really.
I have become a fan of workshops. They make you work and think differently and they can add significantly to your bucket of skills. The ongoing criticism of course is that no one ever goes home and actually uses the information. That point is certainly arguable but I find them a complete joy. This would be somewhat of a confession since I was less than overjoyed at turning over my personal space to 4 or 5 workshops a year. The fabulous energy more than compensates for the sacrifice.
I would suggest if you are incurable. If you have just returned from Tucson with a bag of treasures and you are not quite sure what to do with them but, you are sure that commercial findings and glue on, stick on pendants just won’t work anymore consider jumping in the pool by taking some workshops. Specifically a stone setting class then go break some rules and just play.
While spring is a long way off for the mountains it is none the less time to start cleaning and reorganizing for our metalsmithing school. I am sifting through my piles, throwing and putting away..well, Ok, I am thinking about all that cleaning. We are professionals, which means simply we have been accumulating stuff for years.
Musing on my collection of bezel pushers, each tool with its own accent as it were for moving a bezel over a stone I can’t help grinning. I love my tool collection. Still I only reach for a dozen of my tools in a given day. The rest sit for that specific problem than only a specialized tool can handle.
I have been reflecting on Jessica Kidd’s Beginner class. She taught last year and has agreed to come back and teach this year. We have begun to get the questions inherent for beginners. What tools do I really need? What should I buy? Should I get professional tools or harbor freight imports? These are some of the impossible questions that the beginner instructor has to face. Most of us understand that there are at least six ways to accomplish almost any task in metalsmithing and there are at least that many tools for each job. So we admit there is no one way to do anything, that goes for both tools and the techniques for using those tools. The big question then is… What tools are essential now and what tools can wait?
Jessica has solved this brillantly for her class. She has some simple projects that introduce the student to metalsmithing and a small list of tools that will make those projects. Fun and challenging. In fact although I didn’t actually take her class (I am a school assistant i.e. fetch and carry answer questions when i can) I was impressed with what you can accomplish with a finite, limited list of supplies. In fact when I asked her about why she did something this way instead of that she aswered bluntly “because that is the tools they have in their kit”. I promtly went back to my corner. Her list will allow you to go home and work on and make other designs.
I highly recommend Jessica Kidds beginner class if you want a taste of the jewelry world and and intro into the tools required to be a metalsmith.
I have thought ever since we should have a workshop for all of us “professionals” where you go back to the basics. You know, a project where you are allowed only a few tools and some polishing disks. The creativity would be enormous. We could all use a beginning class. In fact I picked up some tips just hanging out.
While I am unlikly to give up my piles of tools, there is a part of me who remembers how easy clean up was when I only had one of everything.
Toni Tischer alias crzy woman
We are very new to this and probably way to old to be attempting this without a 20 something geek standing next to us slapping our hands everytime we touch the keyboard. Anyway, the school and Scavezze Goldsmith consists of Jerry Scavezze and Toni Tischer, two goldsmiths living and working in Salida, CO. Toni designed and built both our new school website and this blog. Thank You, Toni. Enjoy, we’ll see where all this leads.
If you are interested in any of our classes please email or call for info. Jerry and Toni
Click on the link below to view a very brief explanation of what anticlastic raising is.
anticlasticbrief1
