To divide or make something in such a way as to resemble a net or network….

There is always a bowl of scrap silver wire and metal bits close at hand on my work bench.  So coming up with supplies for this project was easy!  It’s been some time since I played with reticulation but I had an idea of combining it with another earring design I really liked and that led to these.  The silver reticulated beautifully onto the copper base and is full of fissures and craters, heavily accented with a patina of  Liver of Sulfur. The wire is Sterling  Silver as are the ear wires.

This process led to a few more pieces:

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This process is nicely demonstrated in this video by Nancy Hamilton and she show just how easy it can be.  I like pre-cutting my pieces because it is hard as sin to cut once it’s been reticulated!

It didn’t make much of a dent in my scrap pile–

Sometimes you just need to beat something with a hammer.  Luckily I have a decent stash of copper…It’s been awhile since I did fold forming and air chasing. It was a nice change from the finicky details involved with most of my silver pieces.

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This fold forming process begins with annealing a strip of metal, in my case, copper and then creating random folds, hammered down to make nice clean lines.  That’s the  easy  part.  Beating it into submission means the metal has work hardened and unfolding it can be a bear.  More heat usually solves that problem and then I repeat the process many times over until the piece has been folded to death-or to my liking…or my hands give out.  Just depends.

Air chasing involves creating a pillow-shaped fold that is then manipulated with a rounded punches, in various sizes. The air  cushion allows me to “chase” the little pillow pockets into various shapes. Again, lots of annealing involved, some gritting of my teeth too.

When I’m done, I have some very rough pieces to work with and then start the design and cutting process. This is the air chasing strip I made into a cuff, just applying my maker’s mark before the final cleaning step:

Some clean-up and a soak in the Pickle Pot  and now we’re getting somewhere:

After all that work, I gave them a dunk in Liver of Sulfur to create an ageing patina, then started the clean-up and buffing process all over again. I know-looks like I’m going backwards-

A bit more cleaning with steel wool and polishing pads and I think we’re done…

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Next project— off to clean up the mess I made in the studio…