I have been working on a collection since this past summer and decided to release it as collection instead of individual pieces for greater impact. I wanted to have a body of work all in one place to show my progression in design and engineering. But, I have been told that my engineering is not what sells my jewelry which disappoints me greatly since I love that about my work.  It seems that people are more interested in the story behind the work. I have never been good at telling that story, it is too close, too revealing. But , here it goes.

My main influences came form a project my daughter did for her middle school social studies class. She had a section about the Aztecs and Meso-American world and I helped her to make a floating garden like the Aztecs did. I had done this for my son 4 years prior but this time it really got to me, the Aztec art really cut into me. As it turned out there was an Aztec art show my apprentice, Dick Barber, told me about at the Museum of Art at the U of A and he and I went on a field trip to see it.

The Aztecs had a way of distilling design to capture it’s soul and edited to a minimum. No line is wasted, the opposite of Baroque. I have always loved clean bold work , in my fore fathers designs and Spratling ,so this was a historical confirmation of my aesthetic.

Bracelets started this collection off then neck wear followed.

Toci Bracelets by Sam Patania

 These two bracelets were the first pieces I finished. I named them Toci after the Aztec goddess.

Toci necklace by Sam Patania

To me they are strong pieces, evoking  power. My work is seldom quiet and hard to notice, the woman who wears these will be strong in personality and unafraid, my jewelry is just an outward manifestation of her inner strength.

I developed the chain link backed collar as a piece of jewelry which would require little fitting yet have the visual strength I love. My very first try at this was this Azteca collar.

Azteca chain back collar by Sam Patania

This piece was an evolution of a bracelet design, it is light in weight and feminine yet strong. The round elements were planets to me, cosmology is fascinating to me. Maybe a moon necklace?  Time, seasons as studied by the ancients is wonderful to me. The clear ancient sky is something I have always dreamed about, the study of the stars and planets a logical conclusion of all that sky to look at all your life.

Cosmos set by Sam Patania

This set is made of planets floating in a river which as described was so logical when the ancients had such a beautiful sky to look at. The Milky Way , our solar system, our home and our order in the Cosmos. The order of the planets the envy of our often chaotic lives.  Jewelry able to capture that order and show the power of the wearer.

Black on Black set by Sam Patania

This was the last group of pieces I finished, Black on Black. This set is a real departure for me in design. I have been working up to it all my career and could finally put it all together. Originally inspired by a Dalmatian dog, I wanted to make a Dalmation bracelet. I decided that keeping the back ground black is much more interesting so it ended up Black on Black. This came from the same inspiration as all the other pieces but, the visual ended up much different. I leave this up to your interpretation, it is so strong and different, I love it, I loved making it. I had a man deliver water to my studio who asked what kind of jewelry I made. I had no idea what to tell him.

These pieces are all available at www.mschon.com , Marbeth Schon’s gallery. Please contact Marbeth Schon for pricing and availablility of any of these pieces.  Thank you Marbeth.

I never like to make one piece at a time so while I made this bracelet I also started another but used 18K on it. I am awaiting stones from Roark, probably I will have to go with ruby, I just loved what happened with the first one. The next bracelet will be a bit different than this one and I’ll post it when I get it done.

Sterling , 22K gold and ruby bracelet by Sam Patania

I also finished the last of the Landers bracelets and do not expect to ever have such large Landers to work with again in my life. Setting those stones was nerve wracking because a replacement stone would never be available. Diamonds, rubys and sapphire can all be got, you may have to pay allot but they are available, Landers turquoise is no longer being mined because the vein is played out, no more exists in the ground.

Sterling and Landers turquoise bracelet by Sam Patania

It was a privilege to work with this turquoise.

I recently was getting jealous of Spratling’s use of Mexican motifs, I as a middle age white man , don’t feel any cultural attachment to any design motifs. I figure after a couple generations of a family in the US culture is washed away. My culture is McDonald’s and Circle K. I never felt that I could use Native American or Mexican designs in my work and feel like it was original. Both of these influences were and are ever present in my life, being located in Tucson. I love both of those influences but never could bring myself to call them my own. I have done lots of work which could easily be mistaken for Native American and maybe even Mexican but, in my art work, my one of pieces,  I shy away from doing that. I would never make a Man in the Maze, it just isn’t my culture and I am hung up on that.

Spratling, was of course, an Anglo who moved to and worked in Mexico so he couldn’t claim a cultural kinship with many of his designs either, in my mind, but employed Mexican workers and lived down there. Those reasons and the fact that he was a pioneer in the Mexican jewelry industry give him a credibility that I lack for the use of those design motifs. But I Love his work and want to use the distillation of design that I see in Aztec work. So in the pictures that follow and in the near future I think these influences will creep into my work. The upside of having no culture is that I am free to let what ever I want influence me and don’t have any cultural restrictions. As you may be able to tell, I grew up with out the internet and the instant availability of information, things in my mind move a bit slower than all that.

One wonderful thing that has happened to me this summer is that Marbeth Schon has decided to represent me in her gallery. Her location address is available on my About Patania page and her web link is; www.mschon.com. I am very proud to be included in Marbeth’s gallery and thank her very much.

Sam Patania

Some of the bracelets shown in this photo are very much influenced by Thunderbird design, from my grandfather’s and dad’s workshops, and some has the aforementioned Mexican influence.

Rio Plata bracelet by Sam Patania

This is a close up of one of the pieces, in sterling with 18K gold accents.

Rio Plata bracelets by Sam Patania

The one in the fore ground has amethyst cabs ( 6mm) sterling and 18K gold accents on a sterling bracelet, the background one is all sterling. These both have half spheres bezel set on them.

Bracelet by Sam Patania 2009

I have made a few of these bracelets all with different ends. Lona wanted one in platinum so I ordered a bar of platinum 6*6 mm square. This was a heavy piece of material, unbelievable. It was such a wonderful opportunity to work with that much plat. but it made me nervous so I made a silver model the exact size she requested.

Bracelets by Sam Patania, 2009

These bracelets are made by filing away what I don’t want and few artists get to work platinum this way, most platinum work is done to conserve material, hollowing out heavy areas and making it thin. This design is not made that way, I designed this to move and flow like forged work but not be forged. I never dreamed this would be done in platinum so I didn’t design it to be light. To cast this design would be to take the heart out of it, solid fabricated work has a living feeling to it.

Thank you to Lona, I hope you enjoy this piece.

Skip says he is researching a book about the Patania family history in jewelry and the Thunderbird Shop tradition. My grandfather named his store the Thunderbird Curios when he first opened on the Plaza in Santa Fe in 1927. He then opened a branch in Tucson in 1937 and the store evolved into the Thunderbird Shop. Skip, my father and I spent a couple hours together which was very interesting to me. I am learning family history from this process which I didn’t know. My father is having to research information about his father and is learning new things too. Skip has become a good friend during this process and I look forward to more talks with him and my dad.

Spring

Working with an expensive piece of turquoise like Landers is nerve wracking just like setting a large diamond. The thing about a diamond is that it could be replaced much easier than a piece of Landers. One more thing about this turquoise is that it is much larger than any other piece of Landers I have ever worked with. It could never be replaced and I found the nerves coming up when I set it. It is a nice thick piece of stone so that was not the concern, it’s just that any stone can break during setting.

Bracelet by Sam Patania

I have been granted more patience in my craft by who ever grants such stuff and am enjoying more detailed work. I made the round elements or charms with different stamps that I have from previous family generations, all made in the Patania studios. Some of the charms have round edges and some have scalloped. Each is unique. I cut out the bracelet’s back so that the charms would seat and stamped the bottom of those charms so that from underneath they are visible.

Inside of Landers Charm bracelet

This bracelet is a nice heavy weight, 164 grams finished.

Side view Landers Charm bracelet

This piece took me longer than I thought it would because I needed to engineer it on the fly. It is hard to judge how much room , visually, that I will have when the bracelet is bent. A flat drawing cannot tell you how much space you will end up with. Lona is very generous and asked that I make it how it needed to be made and not stuck to a design I had drawn. If there was one thing I could wish into existence it would be the ability to draw better, or at all. But, I have stopped struggling about my drawing and accept that I am a 3-d thinker.

Bracelets by Sam Patania, 2009

These two bracelets are all sterling silver, pierced sheet with domes added. I have taken a photography tutorial and have started to take my photographs on a reflective surface so that they can be seen from two angles at once. In the reflection  you can see the three dimensional aspect of these two pieces as well as the pierced areas.

I enjoyed these pieces so much and I hope to continue making pieces like this which seem to be a new direction for me. I would like to add stones, I think geometric faceted stones sets as well as calibrated cabs would fit well with these designs. Gold and silver combinations as well. I currently have a commission from a patron to make one of the ZigZag ( silver and gold)  bracelets which I posted about last time in platinum and 18K gold. Working with platinum like that is an amazing opportunity for me, I’ll post about it when I’m done.

I named these two bracelets Rio Plata ( 1 and 2) as a nod to the Mexican influence which I live in. I love my work.

Bracelet in Sterling Silver and 18K Gold

And I really love those materials but, I kept looking at these books and understood that design drove these artists and felt I was somehow missing that in my work. I thought that I should do this and that to make my work more design and less materials. I didn’t work, I can’t make myself do things like that. I am not in control of my creativity, I really am not. I loved making this bracelet, I want one myself but I made this one in a woman’s size, damn it. I find it hard to make myself anything, I have little patience for that.

Anyway, if you want to see my influences, check out those books.  I made a sister piece to this since, as I have posted before, hate to make one of anything. I’ll post that bracelet next week when I finish it it’s sitting in the liver of sulphur solution right now, otherwise known as stink water.

The gem shows ( there are 30 plus shows at venues all around Tucson)  are wonderful to see what is going on in the market in my industry. I get to see many friends who come to town for the shows and the tool trade shows are amazing for a tool junkie like me.  Rio Grande puts on a great show as does Stuller and Otto Frei. I get to see and handle all the tools they bring. My favorite gem supplier comes also, Tim Roark who got my loyalty when I saw him set up at the SNAG conference.

I have had two commissions both to duplicate previous generations of Patania’s work. Frank Patania and Frank Patania Jr, my father and grandfather, were and are very strong designers and their work has become very collectible and getting scarce. I am asked to duplicate their designs on a regular basis. I still have turquoise they bought so I can offer that to clients and in one case I had silver elements of my grandfather’s to incorporate into the work.

I find this work very challenging since I find myself trying to think like they thought when they were making the original pieces. My own techniques and ideas creep into this type of work though and I look at them like they are wrong. These clients are asking for duplicates of work, not my ideas. It’s tough sometimes but I am so grateful for the work. I get to use materials I love, silver and turquoise and learn how they thought through their work. Interesting.

Necklace and Bracelet by Sam Patania

The necklace and bracelet set were the first pieces I completed this past week. I had been working on it for a week when the gem show hit. I would work on it a few hours aday during the show as well as the next peice pictured.

Bracelet by Sam Patania

 This bracelet is a variation of a design my father made in the 1960’s He called it Bits-O-Silver so I continue calling it that. I used Bisbee turquoise I bought from Bruce Mead in this piece and Persian turquoise int he necklace and bracelet above. The Persian was turquoise my grand father bought in the 1950’s.

Thanks to Orchid for the many friends I have who come to Tucson each year and for the opportunity to meet more people in my industry. Robin Hawke, Dave Arens and Kevin Potter deserve special mention this year. I love Orchid.