Making Wire Jewellery

Book excerpt: Precious metal wire is a versatile material that can be used to great advantage in jewellery design. This book focuses on using soldering techniques to confidently construct wearable wire jewellery designs. It incorporates fundamental skills such as cutting, filing, annealing and soldering, and encourages the maker to master these basic techniques, so they can create individual articles of wire jewellery using their own inspiration and designs. There are suggestions on how to approach the design process through sketching, model making and creating test pieces, and a comprehensive list of tools and equipment needed for working with wire. Also included are illustrated step-by-step instructions for learning basic wire working processes, such as drawing, twisting, hammering and soldering wire, and practical advice for constructing more complicated pieces of jewellery containing structural forms. With further instruction for making chain, applying surface finishes and adding decorative elements to individual designs, this will be of great interest to all jewellers, and is superbly illustrated with 226 colour photographs.