Necklace by Sam Patania
Christmas 2008 got busy and I was in the studio late for the past week and a half. I’m tired and the studio is a mess and I’m more behind in paper work than usual but, it was a good season.
This necklace was a commission based on the piece in the same materials which I posted about a few weeks ago. I decided while I was making this one I should make two, the second one in turquoise. The turquoise one remains unfinished and after I finish I will post about it. These necklaces were such fun to make, I lost track of time while making them so staying late was not even noticed. The dogs didn’t get exercised much in the past weeks but Kilo got to the dog park this morning.
The goal of this necklace was to make a new style using forging to formthe silver and have it flow around the stones. While I was making this I named it a couple of things but my favorite name was ” less than perfect”. That was my favorite because I was not trying for symmetry or finish which is most important in many of my pieces. I wanted the forging left rough, hammer and tool marks were left in. The stones dictated the final shape and they were not symmetrical but not strictly free form either. They had the shapes I would put in a necklace to maintain the visual weight of a necklace but didn’t match in shape with each other. Because the stones didn’t match each other the silver doesn’t match right to left. This is the effect I was after.
The other name I had for this work was “Hippy Haute” where I thought of the final shapes as if they were taken off the posters of rock groups in San Francisco in the 1960’s. Definitely hand made with heart.
The stones in this piece are some of the azurite/malachite I bought from Bruce Mead this past year. It is such beautiful stone, the center stone has no malachite in it which it unusual. I love azurite blue and was able to pick a set out of my stash. Picking sets of this stone is very difficult. I put a sapphire cab in the center of the piece, I had 2 cabs left over from my Sapphire Flowers project ( southwesternjewelry.net) .
One of these days I want to make one of these necklaces in 18K gold. It’s hard to use gold in such a free manner just due to the cost. These necklaces are so free form I could never draw one out prior to making it, I have no way on knowing how they will turn out. Each one is very experimental and , for instance, the use of the sapphire in this piece was something I thought of half way through making it. I had made the central silver piece and thought a sapphire would look really nice there so I was wheeling across my studio to my desk and there were the two sapphire cabs sitting there.
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Helen Hill 12.26.08 at 10:06 am
Gorgeous necklace Sam. I love the flowing lines.
Helen Hill