Box with Flower

When I make floral elements for necklaces I don’t really plan it out and end up with some that are the wrong shape or two big or too small. I work this way in silver but for cost considerations I can’t do that in gold. I had made this large flower several weeks ago and wanted to use it somewhere but it was so large I didn’t want to use it for jewelry. I decided to put it on top of a box where I can be more sculptural but still use all my jewelry making ideas and techniques.

I had some Morenci ( Arizona) turquoise that my grandfather bought in the late 1950’s or ealy 1960’s that I used. I am almost out of this stone and will miss it when it is gone. I have a couple different shapes of this turquoise , some more pears and some marquis shaped which I will have to figure out how to mount. I had sold this turquoise to a man named John Joyce who I met at the Tucson gem show many years ago. I ended up buying back most if not all this turquoise after I realized how nice it was. Such is the life of a turquoise man.

This is a hinged lid box with feet, in the second photograph I show the back feet and the hinges. I had fun making the feet with sterling tubing filled with a concave sterling disk. On one of the feet I put my hallmark.

The flower is almost 4 inches long by 3 inches and the box itself measures 4 1/4 by 3 inches. I modified the flower as I mounted it onto the box to make the design flow more and textured the box lid to give the flower more depth and contrast. Most of the bezels are sawtooth, made on the shear my grandfather and Mike Mariott made in the 1950’s. The top of the flower has plain bezel. I did this because as I am making a flower like this I think about how a flower would grow, how does the inside look and how do the colored elements attach and come out of the flower. How does the flower open up and age. I do this with the vine parts of the flower too.