Favorite Picks and Holiday Wishes from the Beading and Jewelry Team

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Our workdays are filled with art and creative people. No matter the task d’jour, even when it’s a spreadsheet, it leads to something beautiful. We are thankful for that and for all of you who seek inspiration alongside us. As we wrap up 2020, we’re happy to share a few of our favorites from the year.

ABOVE: Kate Wolf Earrings. Garnets, 18K gold PHOTO: COURTESY KATE WOLF

I love editing Beadwork magazine and it has been fun to add hosting a podcast to my to-do list this year. Beaders and jewelry makers are passionate people and it’s exciting to listen to their stories about the art and business of jewelry. In 15+ episodes of Jewelry Artist podcast, we learn about pearls with Tammy Jones, carving wax with Kate Wolf, and more. Each artist generously gives us a glimpse into their world, from inspiration and motivation to the realities of making money from your art.

One of my favorite conversations was with Karen Smith, founder of We Wield the Hammer. In Jewelry Artist Episode 14, Karen shares her vision to teach bench jewelry skills to young women of African descent in Oakland, CA. Karen is a metalsmith and educator who is following the voices of creativity, skill, and determination in her art and budding nonprofit.

Read more about We Wield the Hammer in the November/December 2020 issue of Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist. In the Trends column, Deborah Yonick shares “Pay It Forward: Three women jewelry artists of color celebrate their art and advocate for change.” Visit We Wield the Hammer to learn more, including how you can help make a difference.

Happy New Year,

Katie Hacker
Editor of Beadwork and host of Jewelry Artist podcast

Three Ways to Look at Jewelry Tools

No one ever gets past the basics: that’s not the point. The point is to learn them so you can keep putting them to use. And in 2020, Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist looked at basic tools not from the usual beginner’s point of view, but from that of several masters. In a trio of stories in the July/August Tool & Supply Issue, we talked to three highly accomplished artists to explore how the jewelry they make informs everything about their choice and use of bench tools.

1 Tools. “Gotta Have ‘Em” is about which tools. Our selected pros were allowed to pick only six bench tools. Writes author Sharon Elaine Thompson, “Joe Silvera, co-owner of the Silvera Jewelry School in Berkeley, California, and Michael Kosinski, co-owner of Metal Arts Academy in Auburn, Califor­nia, gave us their picks for metal-working bench tool necessi­ties. Kate Wolf, owner of Wolf Tools in Portland, Maine, known for her wax-working skills as well as for her tool design, gave us hers wax carving.”

2 Setups. In the intro to “Setup Is a Good Thing,” writes Sharon, “An efficiently set up bench in­creases the speed with which you work.” As they say in business, time is money. Even if you’re not in business or your business is mainly there to support your jewelry making habit, having a smoother operation helps minimize frustration and makes the whole experience way more fun. As with which tools, so with how you arrange them at your workspace: it depends on what you want to do.

3 Jewelry. “Beauty and the Basics” is the story that puts everything together, literally. Here the artists give detailed examples of just what they do with those select tools to produce their particular style of work.

This signature wedding band by Michael Kosinski is just exquisite. “Kosinski creates jewelry by sawing, carving, and chasing his designs directly from solid metal,” as he did for floral band above. “The curved band is first forged to shape it from square wire, then tapered with a ball peen hammer. He uses dividers and a scribe to lay out and mark the metal with precise guide­lines indicating where diamonds will be set, and where the flowers and leaves will be placed.”

Among the jewelry Joe Silvera likes to produce is reticulated silver with keum boo. “Silvera is a big fan of using burnishers and scrapers . . . The burnishers help him bring difficult-to-reach surfaces to a fine polish, as he did on these pendants of reticulated silver and keum boo. He first reticulated the silver, then soldered on the wire elements and bails at the top. Lastly, he added the keum boo. The burnishers were used to fuse the thin, keum boo gold to the surface of the reticulated metal. He used his scraper to scrape the scale and scratches off the bail and the smooth elements, then used the burnishers to polish the surfaces. He even used the burnishers to break through the patina on the crests of reticulation wrinkles so the high­lights flash against the darkness.”

Kate Wolf made the sterling floral ball above using her wax tools. “At some point, I used almost all the tools in my 18-piece set,” she says. “I used the knife to cut away material, and the side of the knife to scrape. The 90-degree tool is used to work on right angles. The convex tools are used to create concave surfaces. I use the long edge of the knife to scrape the wax, and its beveled edge to make relief cuts and start my pierce-out work. . . the tapered triangle carver for piercing.”

The beauty of tools, and basic hand tools in particular, is that they can be used to do many different things, in many different ways. It’s all about what you want to accomplish. Learning to use them and developing your signature style go hand in hand.

Merle White
Editor-in-Chief, Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist.

Beaded Objet d’art

My beading habit started with jewelry, like most of us, but I have really gotten much more interested in beaded objects and art in the past few years. I find that it’s a much more widely appreciated art form, and people who “aren’t that into jewelry” can approach and be captivated by a little beaded object. It draws you in closer to inspect the form instead of just being pretty. That’s why Edgar Lopez’s Pineapple Pendant is my vote for best Beadwork project of 2020.

Edgar’s design is instantly recognizable as a little beaded pineapple, which will bring a smile to anybody’s face when they see it. I made one that dangles from the bottom of one of my hanging plants, catching the light, and anybody’s attention who happens to glance in its direction! I am hoping that in 2021 we get more submissions like this one to share with our readers.

Meredith Steele
Technical Editor, Beadwork

To all of you from all of us – we wish you a wonderful year ahead filled with art and beauty –

Interweave Bead & Jewelry Team