Final Exam Display

For my final display I continued with my use of jars to show my pieces. I found that the distortion created by the water and glass was particularly prominent in the dark. The way that the lights highlighted my pieces in the dark reminded me of how deep sea creatures look while being filmed when they are illuminated by the camera lights.



I noticed my pieces being further distorted when I held the camera at a low angle. This angle showed the piece reflected in the surface of the water.



To create this deep sea feeling, and further enhance the distortion and context of my pieces, I should in the future display my jewellery illuminated in the dark.

Completed Necklace

Ocean/Jelly Ring

Moving on from my 'Jelly fish' brooches, I decided to continue with the concept of an ocean 'feeling'. I did this by taking certain aspects from previous pieces such as enamelling, hidden detail and traces of the manufacturing process. The idea was to create a piece that wasn't directly linked back to any sea animal or creature, but rather has the feeling of something that could be found either on the ocean floor or living along a reef.

Abstract Jelly Brooch....

Stumbling onto this way of threading the nylon, and then discarding my original idea, is how i enjoy manufacturing jewellery. Like the inspiration behind my pieces, I allow the actual process of manufacturing to be organic and natural. By starting with a basic idea and then 'going with the flow', I feel like my pieces are almost grown. This 'growing' feeling is reinforced by leaving traces of the manufacturing process on the finished piece.

These photos show the finished brooch...

abstract jelly

Although this piece does not look like a jelly fish at first glance, I believe that its development from an original jelly fish shape can be seen through my exploratory drawings.

Finished Earrings

finished ring

This ring turned out exactly as I had hoped! Although the ring isn't very wearable because of the porous and fragile nature of the coral, I felt that as an object to look at, put on, take off and look at again - it serves its purpose as something visually interesting (miniature sculpture?)


The detail once again is found on the under side of the ring, and I balanced out the heavy coral with a thick based shank.

finished Vetkat pendant

Yay, it's done. Although I was hesitant at first about doing Vetkat inspired jewellery, because I convinced myself it could in no way relate to my work, I am really glad I made this piece. I managed to make the theme suit my way of makin jewellery and apply some of the concepts I am working with for my Btech. Aswell as these, I played with a new technique and got myself enamelling again...


A slight problem that I encountered while making this piece, was spending what felt like forever, sanding and filing and sanding and filing to ensure that the back of my setting would get a great highly polished finish. Only to have all the solder run and ruin it when I soldered my little tree...

... After resanding and polishing I ended up glass brushing my piece to give it a matte finish because I wasn't completely happy with the highly polished result.

AngloGold final drawings

To work my AngloGold designs into my Btech theme I used similar shapes and techniques that I have been using in my own pieces of jewellery and I used one of my favourite sea references of zoomed in barnacles, as seen below...

I used the negative shapes from these references and used them in my design as elements to be pierced out, which would allow fabric to be seen through the metal.

'Green' pendant & chain

The pictures below show the front and back of my finished pendant for the Shades of Green exhibition. During a discussion about our pieces it was said that the pendant looked too heavy for this particular chain. This could be fixed by adding more links to the chain - not to increase its length, but to make it appear heavier. Or different thicknesses of wire can be used for the links to make the chain look stronger.

The following picture shows the detail on the back of the coral pendant. The coral was very difficult to set as it's incredibly porous and fragile, luckily it didn't break while i was setting it...

Completed Ring

Looking at my finished piece, I am not entirely happy with the setting. I enjoyed experimenting and learning what NOT to do though... The edges of the setting did not fold in the way I had intended, this might have been because I forged the setting before bending it up and soldering, and possibly because my metal was slightly too thick.

The underneath of the setting though I am very happy with! I feel that the shank being bent to the shape of the pierced out sections worked out very well. Since the focus of this piece was to bring detail to the hidden areas of jewellery, much like the hidden world beneath the surface of the sea, I feel that the piece was successful...

Reflective Report on Soldered & Enamelled ring...

My aim with this piece was mostly to test a technical problem when working with enamel, which was whether I could torch fire and enamelled element once it has been soldered to something i.e. a shank.

The ring design as one similar to a pair of earrings I had previously made which were inspired by the shape and form of a clam.

Ultimately I found out that you can torch fire enamel onto a soldered object, but it depends on how the objects are soldered, and the melting point of the enamel. With my piece the enamel took a while to become vitreous and as a result of this the shank melted into the element on top slightly, and the area around the solder join became incredibly dirty. To clean the joins then became the next problem because most enamels get cloudy when they come into contact with acid, so I had to paint the acid onto the dirty areas with a brush… which worked quite well.

I learned that it is possible, but risky, to enamel soldered objects…

another chain...

...but this one doesnt tangle as much :)

with this chain i didnt make lots of forged twisted ends, because it turns out, those twisties hook on all sorts. Instead I folded the ends over and soldered them so that they can't be hooked.

playful chain

These photos show the new chain that i recently manufactured. I wanted to try different links with this chain. I managed this by twisting, melting, and forging parts of the links. I think the chain looks lovely on its own, but i may add a pendant to it that won't be a permantent fixure.

the only hiccup with this neckalce is that the links hook on eachother, which would take time to untangle before wearing...

new pretties...

Little silver and enamel clammy earrings...

necklace is finished!

KZNSA jewellery

The tech students have new showcases at the KZNSA gallery. These are a few of the pieces that i have on display