Working With Silver Clay

Sunday, April 19, 2009

In the previous post I mentioned metal clay as one of the jewelry media that I like working with.  One comment asked about it.  This post chronicles my first attempts with precious metal clay (PMC). Metal clay seems to be a mistake when one first hears of it.  Briefly, it is actual powdered metals, most often silver because of the cost but also gold and most recently bronze, mixed with clay and water. The clay can be molded, shaped, and carved then dried. It is then fired in a kiln or with a handheld torch or small gas fired stove depending on the type of clay. The clay burns away leaving sterling silver or 14k gold. The clay can be combined with wire and with some very hard gemstones.  The ring at left, Twisted Twig Ring,  is made from sterling silver wire and precious metal clay.  The wire formed the basis for the ring and the clay, in the form of a paste, was used to fuse the wire.  I polished and shaped and sized the ring with filing.

However, the ring was not my first effort with the PMC (which is also a specific brand and type of the clay) My first efforts were a bit more humbling not to mention some wasted sterling silver.  My first effort was to create a free form silver heart. My first effort used art wire as an armature for the heart which was then covered with the clay.  

The wire did not tolerate the temperatures of the firing and the clay was not consistently thick in all parts of the heart. The result was that my artistic vision was achieved but it fell into several pieces which remain in my scrap silver container.

The next effort, I simply sculpted the heart free form with no armature. That worked well, but I did not take into consideration that the shrinkage with metal clay is really very low.  So, I used triple the a mount of clay that I actually needed.  The result was a heart about one inch by three quarters of an inch in dimension.  I embellished the top of the heart with clay extruded from a syringe so it did not take a high polish (done frequently by tumbling the silver with steel pellets.  The final result is a bit heavy but I threaded a multicolor silk ribbon through the chain and I enjoy wearing my  Pi of Hearts.

More tomorrow.

Onedia