Today's ring

I was planning to go into the museum today but put it off as the weather forecast was so bad - actually turned out not to be as bad as expected, anyway, I did spend the day in the studio working on a few ideas.  Here is my Ring a day contribution for today.  This is made using a scrap of silver left in the bottom of my workbench after I had cut out the shapes making the 'Necklace for the Plant Collector's wife'.  It is made using a technique called fold forming.  This is something I was introduced to by Jill Leventon when I spent a fantastic day in her studio in Shrewsbury early  last year.  Jill will be one of the tutors at the Guild of Enamellers annual conference at Nottingham in April running a workshop on press and fold forming.

Fold forming

Today my two students Pam and Glynis have successfully completed their level 1 certification course in Art Clay Silver. I had promised that if they finished in good time I would show them foldforming so here they are working away at two little pieces of copper and here are the results of all their hard labour hammering and annealing. I think it was a good way of releasing the tension of the sustained concentration of their course.