The hostess of our pmc sig, in addition to opening up her beautiful home, is also very willing to experiment with various tools and techniques, and thus has built up a wonderful supply of stamps, cutters and other supplies, all of which she shares freely.

She herself had managed some quite beautiful effects by multiple dippings of various pmc pieces in a liver of sulpher solution (alternating with hot water to speed the reaction.) Silver, as I've mentioned before , forms oxides, that depending upon their size, span the rainbow in terms of color (silver sulphide, the black stuff, on the other hand, only comes in one color, but is extraordinarily stable.)

With her help, I too was able to get some nice color in my pieces.

pmc, stamped, patinated, 2005. Largest piece is roughly 14mm across.

I enjoyed the rectangular end caps in the tube series that I tried making some square beads, but as I quickly discovered, they required gussets if draped over marbles to give the curvature charateristic of the lentil beads. My gussets were not particularly regular, and thus these beads lack the elegance of the ones designed by Ivy Solomon, though I rather liked the celtic interlace patterns.

file created 17jan06

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