Completed Whose Pendant Is This Anyhow?

[Shade]

70th of Spring - 522 A.V.

The woman had come out of the blue to ask him to make her a pendant out of an odd blue-green stone that she didn’t want cut or drilled. Shade didn’t mind doing the work. Paid commissions would be his bread or butter here in Syka and it was something he could do easily, he felt, given that his workshop was only half complete. What she wanted, he decided required wire wrapping and nothing more, which meant he wouldn’t have to use his forge or even break into some of the more complex techniques. He might have to adjust wire a bit more, but he had a drawplate and several thicker gauged wires that he could manipulate into smaller sections for the purpose of crafting the woman’s pendant.

He’d asked her what material she wanted the wire wrapped in and her answer had been immediate. Copper. He didn’t blame her. She had copper colored skin and striking turquoise eyes and a mop of caramel curls that made him wonder what her actual parentage was. She looked Benshira, but had no accent other than maybe something slightly of Riverfall. She’d dealt with him plainly and left the stone in his care. He’d promised it back the next day, which should be easy enough to do as long as the shrew he was here to guard left him alone enough long enough to make the pendant. Ian would be in the way, so he refused, for the next twenty-four bells, to actually be a babysitter.

It still irked him that Shiress treated him like one.

Holding the impressive stone, he twisted it around and around in his fingers. His interview with the woman gave him a bit of insight. He took notes, at her request, because she had told him that her curse was to be forgotten… which was probably why he couldn’t remember her name. But this overnight project was quick, something he got all the materials out for while she was there, and made notes as to where to deliver it with a few underlined words saying he wouldn’t remember due to a curse.

The woman had paid him upfront, so that was nice. All he had to do now was figure out the design. She’d pretty much left it up to him. The stone wasn’t regular shaped, more tear-dropped, and something he could easily wrap designs out without drilling. He started the project out easily enough, much like he started out all his projects.

He took out blank parchment, sketched the stone, and then inked the stone in. Once the stone was inked in, he took a variety of light charcoal pencils and tried several designs on the stone. It had nice almost agate like qualities of various shades of blue and slight green or white depending on how the light hit it. It reminded him of water, in a way, with various depths.

Copper was definitely the metal of choice. He’d written it on the top of the parchment note because he hadn’t wanted to forget the woman’s skin tone which was also a desert color. Ugh… Shade could already feel his mind whirling in circles and decided it was because of his curse. He’d woken up speaking Svefra, which thankfully the woman had a smattering of… so they were able to communicate well enough.



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[Shade]

A tree. He decided in an instant after he’d fiddled with and discarded multiple designs that involved swirls or braided metal. He’d fashion a copper twisted tree out of the metalwork around the stone and make it a lovely wrapped homage to the first tree. He wondered why exactly he’d decided on that pattern. There was something about the woman that reminded him of the jungle giants. Ahh… a jungle tree then with gnarled roots and branches twisting off into the sky.

With that decision made, he took out his sixteen-gauge copper wire, cut off about eight inches of it, and bent it around his jeweler’s mandrel… until it was roughly the right shape for the stone’s rounded bottom. He tested the fit, setting the stone into the curve he made after the gentle bending of the copper wire… and he pulled half-round wire out of his store, cut off about twelve inches of that, and placed the half round against the bottom left edge of the frame wire, wrapped the tail three times around it, and drew the length across the frame. This would form the back cradle of the piece, holding the stone in securely while the tree formed the front cradle. He snugged off the end of the tail then took a second look at the stone he was using.

It was pillowed nicely, not a cabochon at all with a flat back. So he snugged the stone into the wire cradle, then awkwardly stretched the remaining brace piece around what would be the back side of the stone. He used his free hand to adjust the frame wire into the center of the stone before he wrapped the brace wire across the back and removed the stone.

Then he deftly twisted the brace piece around the frame wire, forming a brace that would hold the stone in place across the back. He threaded the tail through, making three more wraps that matched the opposite side. Then he snipped the wire off, set the scrap aside, and snugged the end of the cut piece back down against the frame piece. He pressed the stone in, making sure it was fitting nicely.

He repeated the process, only higher up on the frame wire, doing a top cradle for the piece. He used three loops again, only this time instead of wrapping downward, he wrapped upwards, first on the right side then on the left side, checking the fit of the stone before he secured the second side. Shade was happy that he didn’t stack the wire, being careful. He made sure not to make any pinched marks on the wire. He had a small emery board file he could use to smooth out any marks he made, but it wasn’t necessary since he was being careful.

Shade was also careful about making sure he didn’t brace or wire wrap around the center of an oval stone. If one braced and wrapped in that spot, the stone could slide out either upwards or downwards from a pendant. Instead, he was super cautious about making sure he always wrapped around the smaller portions of the rounded ends to make the stone more secure. When he had the top bracing partially done, he rechecked the stone fit, then bent the tails of the frame up and more around the stone, giving it a framework that followed the shape of the stone.



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[Shade]

Once he was done that far, he took his bent-nose pilers and snugged the cut-off ends against the frame wire and then gripped the coils themselves and compressed them together as tight as he could make them. Once that was done, he rechecked the fit by slipping the stone into the frame, and manipulated the top once more, bending it inward.

Next he pulled out his super thin copper wire and cut off exactly sixteen lengths of it that were twenty inches long. He divided the lengths into two pairs and lightly twisted them together. Then he picked random spots on the bottom frame, and wrapped the pairs around the frame much like he had the cross braces for the back.

He did this seven more times making eight ‘roots’ and secured the wires around the bottom of the frame at various locations, then picked two side by side, twisted them together, brought them randomly up, and then joined them with a pair he similarly twisted right next to them. the idea was to take two twisted wires, join side-by-side with two more twisted sets, and then bring the resulting four sets up…. twisting again repeatedly, until the eight were joined to four, twisted up a bit more, until they were joined to two, then twisted until they formed one giant stem to form the tree.

Now it was time for the fancy stuff. He cut off another length of small gauge wire, this time at least thirty inches wide, and began a wrap from the lower horizontal brace in the back all the way around the frame continuously. Over and over again he circled the bottom part. The point was simple. He just wanted to keep the ‘roots’ from migrating together or apart and loosening or tightening the wrap work.

Some roots he separated by ten wraps, others by two, varying the wrapping at the bottom to give the wire tree a more natural look. One he’d wrapped all the way down and around and back up to the opposite lower horizonal brace, he snipped off the excess length and used his bent-nose pliers to snug in the remains.

Now they were getting somewhere. He paused, before he fit the stone back in, and hit the bare copper wire with a small emery board, filing off any roughness and really smoothing out the metal before it was committed to its nest forever. Shade liked polishing. It was one of his favorite parts of the process when building jewelry. It gave him instant satisfaction to see imperfections snuffed out never to be seen again.


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[Shade]

At that point, Shadekas fitted the stone into the wire, frame, snugged it down, and began twisting the singular ‘trunk’ into a wild looking jungle tree that serpentine its way up the face of the stone before he decided it was ‘tall’ enough and split the bundles in two forming branches. He wrapped the two bundles a while, also snaking them up the stone, before he split them into four, then six, and finally back into the eight bundles of two singular wires.

These wires he formed so they wove tree-like across the surface of the stone and met with the frame again on either side. He secured each two strand at random places on the frame wire and then tucked the ends with his pliers. Then, much as he did on the bottom of the stone, he cut another length of small gauge wire and began randomly wrapping the top portion of the stone from brace to brace, making sure the number of wraps dividing each branch was uneven for a more natural look.

Once that step was done, Shade was back to polishing. He polished happily for a good ten bells, then fitted the stone into the wire aperture again. Once the stone fit to his liking, he took each frame tail, which was quite long, and gently maneuvered them up so they hugged the shape of the stone and crossed at the top. Then he took his square-nosed pliers and starting at the right side, bent first the right-hand frame piece straight up at a ninety-degree angle, then did the same with the left frame piece. He was careful that when he made his bends, he bent each piece so that they touched and had no gap or overlap between them. The frame pieces sticking up at the top of the pendant was going to become a core for the wrapped bail.

Then, once that was done, it was time for him to worry about the actual top. The stone itself was snug in its new cradle and not about to go anywhere. And he needed to form the frame wire tails into a bail to hold the pendant onto whatever necklace he picked. His note asked for leather, which made sense in the jungle, so he decided he could make the bail a bit more elaborate than usual.

He cut a decidedly outrageously long piece of half-round again, then employed a trick he’d learned from his master Lynk. He took out his small mandrel, the one he used for earrings, children’s rings and bails. Then he decided the size of the bail he wanted for the pendant, used a scrap piece of wire to measure that out around the mandrel, and cut it flush against itself so it formed a perfect circle.

Setting the mandrel aside and taking his bent nose pliers, he gently straightened the bent out scrap wire to a straight point which gave him a length to measure to begin working the bail. He laid the now-straight scrap metal down on the workbench, took the half-round he’d cut, and began weaving it around the frame tails, holding a goodly sized portion back as extra before he started his wrap. Then he deftly wrapped the frame wires, turning them into bail cores, to the exact length of the scrap wire he’d already premeasured and cut.


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[Shade]

As he wrapped, he snugged and tightened the wrapped wire down with a pair of leather-wrapped flat-nosed pliers. Then, once it was all straight and flattened, he snipped the half-round off, tucked the sharpened end into the wrap with his blunt-nosed pliers, and then set about fussing with the whole setup. He took his flat-nosed leather-wrapped pliers, grasped the pendant where the bail emerged from the top and angled it slightly at a forty-five-degree bend forward. Then he took his bail mandrel and gently wrapped the forty-five degreed wrapped tails around the mandrel giving the bail a round wrapped top that looked neat.

He brought the ends that were still sticking out down and around, and through the slight gap at the top of the stone, then did a double wrap around the base of the bail for decorative affect, securing the stone and bail in place. At that point, he fussed, polished, and tucked running his thumbs over every wrapped part of the stone making sure there were no pokey bits out of the pendant and nothing had got ten nicked or damaged in his wrapping. When it looked perfect, he set it aside and pulled out a little bottle of acid from his kit.

The acid would give the copper a lovely patina and remove the harsh glare. He brushed the acid from the bottle all over the pendant with a little squirrel-haired brush, and then recapped the acid and stowed it safely away. When his house was done, Shade told himself, he’d have to strictly remind Ian there was no going into his workroom. There were just too many things that could hurt the child… the acid being one of them.

Walking outside with the darkened metal pendant in one hand and a waterskin in the other, Shade knelt by the corner of the building and carefully wet the acid to dilute it. Then he pulled a little cake of jewelry soap from his pocket and swiped the pendant across it twice. Then he began to vigorously rub the soap into action, halting the patina on the copper and washing all signs of the acid away. Then, he rinsed the piece thoroughly again, rubbing off all the remaining soap, and headed back into his workbench.

There he polished the piece with a polishing cloth, bringing back some of its luster between the spaces of darkened patina. Once that was done, he checked the note again, completely forgetting who had commissioned the piece, and decided on a brown leather thong to hang it from as per the instructions. Once the thong was added, Shade – with the note firmly in his hands – set off to his home-away-from-home…. The Protea Inn, to deliver the pendant back to some woman who’s name he’d already forgotten.

Tazrae? Why didn’t that sound remotely familiar? Shade thought he knew everyone in Syka by now…

Words: 2615


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[Shade]

Grading!

Shade -

Jewelcrafting +5, Business +1, Drawing +1, Planning +1

JC: Wire wrapping pendants, Business: Taking Commissions, Drawing: Planning designs ahead and sketching them.

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