These new earrings have been a long time coming, and I have them ready for Three Rivers in Pittsburgh. They’ll be available from Wednesday til Sunday this week.
My creative process for these earrings began by cutting copper sheet metal with a flower punch and die.
Plique a jour is an ancient technique where glass is suspended within a metal frame. For me, the technique is perfect for earrings. The pair I made above are like little stained glass windows of pure silver. Here is how I made them…
I started out with pure silver sheet and pierced out the designs that will be filled with glass.
I filled the pierced spaces with powdered glass enamels and placed the earrings on steel supports called trivets.
Here is how the earrings looked after the first firing. The glass usually doesn’t fill completely the first firing. It takes several firings to completely fill the piercings with glass.
After the piercings were completely filled with glass, I sanded them flush with the sheet metal and refined the outside shapes.
Here’s how they looked after sanding.
The earrings got one more firing to give the glass a final polish. After this step, I burnished the earrings with a glass brush. I made 10k gold posts and heat rivets to suspend the plique a jour designs.
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