City and Guilds Jewellery Course First Project

This is a completely new course for me and I have enjoyed learning new skills.  The first project was a  bit difficult as the original teacher had to have an operation and her replacement changed the project.  This was completely fine; in fact I preferred the new project to the original one.

The project is to make a pendant from two types of metal without soldering and using a non permanent method of attachment.  Research into source material for the design needs to be shown. We are required to make three designs and choose one to make.  All experimental pieces need to be displayed and reasons given why the final piece was chosen.

Evaluation of the cost and time taken to make the piece as well as resources required need to be made.

My source material was obtained form the microscopic animals such as the amoeba and Paramecium;. fruits including apples and pears and abstract art; in particular Kandinsky.

The course covered:
Cutting metal with a saw
Drilling holes in metal
Riveting sheets of metal together
Annealing metal
Hammering metal
Using wire

I chose to make a pendant/brooch from brass and copper sheet and silver and brass wire.  The final piece is shown below.  I prefer brooches to pendants in general so I thought a dual purpose piece would fit the bill.  the apple hangs from the coil I produced for the brooch pin.  The entire piece is riveted together in sections.  There is no soldering or other form of attachment used.  The final piece depicts an apple with two bites taken out of it and a worm hole.  The apple is 0.9mm brass sheet textured with course grained wet and dry sand paper; the core is hammered and oxidised 0.8mm copper sheet; the pips are also made of 0.9mm brass sheet and textured with very fine grade sand paper and decoratively riveted to the core with silver wire.

Apple Pendant/ Brooch