Completed [Painted Sky Jewelry] Silver and Glass

[Kelski]

Fall 30th, 519 A.V.

Commissions weren’t always the best thing. It was one situation when a person commissioned Kelski to make them a piece of jewelry they longed for or wanted. However, it was totally a different thing when a group approached her to make a gift for one of their mutual companions and they each had a different idea about what they wanted. Today, a group of Svefra stood in the Kitchen of the tower all talking at once. Kelski was having trouble making sense of their wants and needs.

What she could understand was that they wanted to commission a bracelet for their Lia’s birthday. She was a young woman – twenty of age – who loved silver, blues, and greens. She also liked purples and yellows. So far, Kelski couldn’t figure out what color the Lia DIDN’T like. She frantically took notes with a charcoal pencil.

They wanted a design on the bracelet. Swirls and whirls seemed to be what they had in mind with vague patterns that could be interpreted as dogs or dolphins, glittering with a gem in the middle of some sort – possibly purple – though they weren’t sure. Kelski had excused herself twice, ran up the stairs, and had retrieved some examples of her work. She thought the best idea for a bracelet would be a cuff since she could design a cuff practically with a lot of colors using enamels. She also brought down examples of other cuffs she’d already made using the same technique along with an assortment of fluorite stones and one amethyst that would make an amazing center scene.

Luckily the men had come armed with the Lia’s wrist measurements… one at her actual wrist and one higher up on her arm… which would give Kelski a start for the sizing.

She brought down a blank to sketch on, basically to give the gentleman some idea of what she was going to create for them. Along with that, she had the cabochons to lay out. Once she’d gotten this stuff, she cut a template from parchment that would represent the cuff bracelet laid flat, and then opened up her tray of cabochons. “I had an idea.” She told the men.

“Your Pod name is Suntide, so what if we pick one of these cabochons…. “ She gestured to the tray and let them start picking over what she’d brought… then kept talking. “We center the cabochon, then on one side we add a stylized sun. On the other side, we add a moon. Then we take swirls and swirls, adding stars and raised parts to indicate more stars into each swirl, adding in those dolphin wolf shapes all tipping their noses up to the sun image…. “ She sketched on the parchment blank, giving them some idea of what she was talking about.

“The metal would be thick, so I would carve into it… actually do a reverse carving meaning I’d carve the patterns upraised, but then lay the metal down so the design would be concave…. and enamel into the relief. It will be beautiful, sturdy, and all she’d have to polish would be the silver part. It would tarnish against her skin, though Kelski offered to coat it with a clear coat to help protect against such things.

[Kelski]

“These are some of my enamel samples. If you pick out four or five colors you like, I can fill the swirls I make in with these enamels. I can also lighten or darken them, mix them together, let them swirl to form color gradients or all kinds of things.” Kelski explained, gesturing to the bracelet blank and the sketch she had done for it.

By then, the pod members had picked out a very lovely amethyst and had laid it out in the center of the bracelet. Kelski sketched a swirl around it and started the design from there, letting is spiral out. She pulled out a tray of watercolors, a brush, and began to color in some of the swirling patterns she had laid out.

One of the men stopped her. “Add some pops of pink and red… maybe here, here and here.” He said, gesturing to several places. Kelski nodded, cleaned her brush in a little jar of water that was on the table, and swiped through the watercolor brick of red and added a few pops of the red into the bracelet within the swirling pattern. She then added a few more circles just to even out the color distribution. Then she sat back and showed it to the men.

They all looked on, one-pointed and wanted a slight change on the right side. Kelski nodded, noting the change on the sketch but not really able to change the actual sketch now that watercolor was on it.

She then pulled her sample pieces, some that had been made with animals enameled and some made with geometric shapes, so they could see exactly what she was talking about. The men passed the pieces around, nodding, finally understanding the Kelvics design, and came to some sort of agreement among themselves.

“Write it up. Give us the cost and we’ll approve it. How long will it take?” They asked. Kelski looked thoughtful, glanced towards the beach where they were moored, and knew she had other pieces in progress, but nothing that couldn’t be set aside for a rush job. “Fifty gold for the custom work, 10 gold for the rush and undercoating to protect the polish against her skin… and I can have it tomorrow.”

She said, knowing if she worked through the night then the men could be on their way. “Half payment now with the other half due upon completion. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it. I can sell it elsewhere easily enough… though I will retain the ten gold for the rush job because it wouldn’t be fair to pass on that charge to another customer.” Kelski added.

The men looked back and forth at each other and nodded. They pulled out thirty gold, paying her half down, and retired to the beach to let the jeweler get to work.

Kelski glanced down at the sketch, pulled out her inks, and began to ink in the details, firming up the design. When she was done, she took the template – which was only a thin piece of parchment – and carried it up to her workshop. There, she pulled out a sheet of beeswax she had already rolled out and traced the bracelet exactly to the same width as the measurements of the woman’s wrist. She was glad they brought the measurements.

[Kelski]

Once that was done, she carefully traced over the design she’d penciled, then watercolored, then inked into the template. The wax was firm, but soft enough a sharp tool traced over the design would leave a mark in the wax perfectly transferring the design. Kelski pulled the template off, then pulled out Pitch and cut the wax template from the sheet. It was a poor use of her enchanted dagger, but the blade did come in handy for freeing the wax template from the wax sheet.

Once she had the wax version of the bracelet in front of her, she took her carving tools and began to carve out the designs. She didn’t carve the reliefs out completely, but instead chiseled into the wax about halfway, leaving the thick wax filled with hollows that would become the storehouse of the enamels once they were leveled and sealed within the silver.

The carving took a long time… bells in fact. Kelski wasn’t particularly concerned about the pattern. The Svefra had already approved it. What she was concerned about was the depth of the relief, and that the inner surface of the patterns was smooth. Enamel was a terrible tattle-tale. IF there were bumps or waves or even marks the chisel made forming its channels and shapes, the enamel would have raised portions and wouldn’t level out as she needed it too. So the Kelvic went slowly and carefully at her carving, She even heated metal tools intended for clay with her alcohol burner and used those hot tools to smooth out imperfections in the wax from the result of her carving.

When she was satisfied everything was smooth enough to be made into actual jewelry, she had what was, in essence, a flat wax cuff exactly in the shape she wanted the metal to be. She had to transform the wax piece into a silver piece exactly. Using the wax for a melting pattern wouldn’t work because the carved in pieces would be standing up and she couldn’t enamel them. Thus she had to use the wax as casting and mold it so she could turn it into a metal mold.

Setting the wax piece aside, Kelski pulled out her enormous ceramic jar of molding cement. She measured out three cups of it and set it aside. She looked back at the wax cuff and went to fetch slim wax rods made of the same sort of high-temperature burn-off wax. She heated the ends carefully with her alcohol torch and affixed them to the cuff in a blank spot where there was no pattern.

The wax rods would become hollow after the firing and would act as sprues that would provide the channels to allow hot metal into the mold. Then, pulling a casting box out big enough to accommodate the bracelet, she filled the bottom with three inches of plaster she’d mixed with water, let it set up a bit, then settled the wax bracelet in the bottom. Taking the rest of the plaster, she filled up the box and let it set. The plaster would firm up, then she could heat it up in her kiln, burning off the wax inside – turning it into a fine dust – and leaving a hollow mold inside she could then fill with silver.

[Kelski]

It took a few bells, then the mold was into the kiln to harden and burn off the wax. Once that had started – she melted enough silver to fill the space the wax left, and had the metal ready when she pulled the hot mold from the kiln. The plaster had set up nicely and was hard as cinder…. Leaving empty pour holes where the rods of wax had rose off the bracelet.

Kelski let it cook a bell, skimmed the impurities off the silver she had smelted and then transferred the crucible from her forge to where the mold lay and filled the newly hardened mold. She tapped the mold hard twice – releasing air bubbles – and let it set, shutting down her forge for the time being.

Once she’d let the silver set, she took the entire mold – silver and all – and tossed it in a bucket of water. The water-activated something in the newly formed mold that turned it back into powder and the mold dissolved around the silver…. Leaving only the metal bracelet at the bottom with its two rising sprues.

Kelski carefully clamped the flat cuffed bracelet into her vice and using a small jewelers saw, she hacked off the sprues and tossed them into a bucket of scrap. Then she set about polishing and cleaning up the silver cuff before she got out her enamels and began to mix the colors the men had selected.

Before she did that, however, Kelski removed the bracelet from her vice and clamped in a wrist mandrel. Much like ring mandrels, the wrist mandrel let her size and mold bracelets appropriately. Silver was flexible, but the enamel in the design would crack and be ruined if she tried to bend the flat cuff after she applied and heat set the enamel. So she found the measurement on the mandrel that matched the girl's wrist measurement and began to slowly but firmly mold the silver around the metal tube. The mandrel started out small and flared out larger at one end, ranging in size from infant's wrists to very large Akalak or Isur sized arms. Kelski made sure she kept the lower shorter side of the cuff at the six and a half-inch mark and gently molded it around the hardened steel device. When she was done she had a lovely cuff that didn’t quite meet in the back, but gently followed the shape of a woman’s delicate wrist.

Sliding the bracelet off the mandrel, she set it on the counter and turned to her mixed enamels. Kelski was going to torch fire the enamel in, which would give her a beautiful glassy finish in the channels of the design. Enamel was basically melted grains of glass anyhow, so it was fitting for the Lia to have a piece that would sparkle and shine in the sun. Since her enamels were already mixed, Kelski pulled out her torch, lit it, and set up her tripod and affixed the bracelet cuff to it. The bracelet would act as the trivet, so she left the trivet and screen aside.

She slid on safety glasses, put on her gloves, and pulled out paintbrushes to begin filling in the design. She’d have to work in small batches, painting on the enamel then torch firing it until it set. The torch had to be applied to the bottom of the bracelet which would make the bracelet cuff inside a mess until she polished it.

[Kelski]

Kelski pulled back her hair and began painting on the designs. She played fast and loose with color, often blending two or three enamels together, adding in white to lighten and deeper jewel tones to darken. Jewelers could paint on a holding agent, then spread enamel powder on surfaces, but Kelski much preferred to make a paste of the holding agent and powder thus laying the color exactly where she wanted it with minimal waste of the powder itself.

Then she hit the bottom of each section of the design with the torch – on again – off again – bringing the temperature up to the point the silver heated enough to melt the pasty powder and turn the paste to clear glass. She moved the torch in a circular motion, working in small sections, blending color, and pausing often to apply more paste.

There were four heating stages to the enameling. The paste first sugared, turning into what looked like grains of sugar in the pattern. Then it wrinkled, lengthened and looked like orange peel. It full fused shortly after the peel, melting into the cracks and crevices and looking like a lovely liquid. Then, if she still hit it with heat and fussed with it without moving on, it would over fuse and look crackled. Sometimes jewelers would over fire for the aesthetic, but Kelski didn’t like the look. She liked clean clear perfect ‘glass’ enamel that people marveled at how she got to fit in such small delicate spaces.

If one over fused too much, small pits and a darkening would occur at the edge of the pieces as well, making it look like a burnt cookie out of the oven. Again, the thought made Kelski wrinkle her nose as she worked her way from one edge of the bracelet to the other, fusing happily. When she was done, she pulled the bracelet aside when it was cool, put her enameling tools away, and pulled out the nicely cut Amethyst. Kelski tried it on to the center of the cuff, liked it, then pulled it free to wrap it in a silver flange which she then soldered straight to the bracelet to hold the gem in place.

It was late into the night now. But there was just one thing left to do. Kelski cleaned off all the torch black from the inside of the cuff, and took the whole thing to her lap wheel which she applied the buffing and polishing wheel too, and began to polish it. Once the bracelet was polished up, Kelski applied a coat of clear lacquer to the whole thing, tripling the coat on the underside to protect the silver against the Lia’s skin. By dawn the bracelet was ready and she was on her way to the beach to deliver the design.

Count: 2713

[Kelski]

G R A D E S

Kelski-

+3 XP Business XP, +1 XP Leadership, +2 XP Carving, +2 XP Drawing, +2 XP Painting, +3 XP Metalsmithing

PM me with questions or concerns.