This is a piece I can date very precisely, because I made it in one day: the 20th of June, the day before the 2017 Summer Solstice^[1] ; and also the day before JSftY headed back home to Japan with this necklace in tow as a gift for his mother. Why yes, I do often procrastinate, why do you ask? I'd didn't have time to mess around, so I went with tried&true older-designs, which came out beautifully (for a change.)

1.25 pressed hollow lentil with thompson enamels, frit & 23K gold leaf. Sterling components, accented with Czech pressed glass & Bali silver. 20jan2017

I couldn't find my long hand-made headpins in the mess on my stringing desk, and I was out of 18/19ga wire, so I jerry rigged one from a 1" hoop finding. Which would have been fine, I guess, if I'd made the ball a little bigger. Or I'd yanked harder to test the pendant before finishing it. As it is, the ball on the headpin slipped through (one end) of the stopper bead, as you can see in the photo above. But I really liked the way it was underlit, so I saved it.

Pink soda-lime lentil bead pendant, reverse view. 20Jun2017.

After fixing the pendant (by finding my stock of headpins) I photographed the other side as you see. The bail is a punched circle, bent into shape with pliers around first, a thin punch, and then a bead mandrel, and drilled. Easy, simple & elegant.

Click on any of these images to get something in focus, without those horrid artifacts in the chain.

I bounced a little more light into the face of the bead for this shot, which is nice for drawing more attention to the gold leaf, but at the cost of the backlighting.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.