return of the succulents

My signature piece is back...by request..succulents - an obsession of mine, those pretty green cacti -like plants that retain water and come in so many flower like forms.

Succulents happen to be great for casting, as are many natural organic forms - however succulents are so beautiful, they come out looking like beautiful silver flowers.

I picked a few succulents from the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate park and used them to create casts. The process is one where you attach a wax sprue to the flower, which will act as a canal for the molten silver to pass through as it fills the mold. The flower and sprue are then placed into a steel tube canister called a "flask".

The next step is to mix and create investment, a plaster-like material that is poured around the piece into the flask. Then the flask is placed into a kiln for 12 hours and all the organic material plus the wax is burned out.

There are a couple of different casting techniques that I am familiar with, one that uses centrifugal arm that is wound up and that shoots molten silver into the hollow form. The other uses vacuum power to suck the molten silver down through the piece to ensure a complete cast. Both techniques involve melting silver in a crucible to the point that it is liquid.

My original succulents were made with the centrifugal technique. I then had a professional caster make several replicas, which I could then use to create other pieces such as bracelets and necklaces. I used to sell these pieces in a few shops in San Francisco, my succulent ring is actually a part of my daily wear, so recently have gotten a few requests from friends and acquaintances for that same piece.

It's always interesting to get requests and a huge compliment, one of the things I find I need to work on is pricing out the true value of each piece. While many things can be found for cheaper in silver, because I hand make my pieces, I need to accurately and fairly estimate my time. While I love to make people happy and make them what they want, my time is limited and part of my love of jewelry is the creation of something new, so to make something already done involves an exchange of my time where I could be doing something else, and learning.

Either way, its great, flattering and fun - here's the latest succelent I made for Abbey, a slightly bigger version of my ring.