POLISH JEWELLERY PROJECT and THE GREAT ORCHESTRA OF CHARITY

 

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I want to tell you a story of one charity organisation we have here in Poland. It started when I was a kid and now has the so called 22nd grand finale, I remember first Woodstock Festivals, how crazy and controvesial it was, gathering all kinds of people, from death metal fans to priests, and the man who started it, Jurek Owsiak, who always says “it will play till the end of the world and one more day”

The grand finale is always in January, great counting of the gathered funds is a celebration, you can see people helping _everywhere_, many proud to have their sticker every year, meaning they took part and gave something, does not matter if it’s under one dollar value. The money goes to the children and lately also to the older people health care. The equipment bought for hospitals etc. is amazing and it saved so many lives I can’t even wrap my mind aroud it.. I always thought of it as maybe the only event that unites my nation so much, seriously.

This year I had my chance to finally give something worthy to the Great Orchestra. I suddenly met many people who get together to make outstanding things and donate them for the orchestra auctions. These people were jewellers!

There are too many projects to type about here, so I just want to show you a sample of what we did :

I know it’s in polish, but you may see on the pictures how our Tiamat necklace travelled the country and how we created it. [The model is a famous traveller and writer Beata Pawlikowska, I just fell from my chair when I saw she picked our Tiamat necklace]:
http://aukcje.wosp.org.pl/tiamat-wedrujacy-po-polsce-naszyjnik-z-turkusem-i889313

a link to the Great Orchestra: http://en.wosp.org.pl/

Joined in fire

This is about the Goldie metal clays I’m using. I love making colorful things just from metals and since the new Goldies showed up, all I was thinking about was connecting them together.

As they all have different firing temperatures that can be really tricky, but I managed to make it a few times, so I wanted to make one piece with all of them together [I forgot Roman Bronze later;)]

When you join clays with different firing schedules it’s hard to make it in one firing, so ofcourse I had to try;)

I managed to make one flat circle of four clays all rolled together. [didn’t take the picture, but maybe I can add it next time]

I was careful not to mix them too much, trying to keep them in order, so the clear color stripes were visible.

Then I formed a leaf, it was Goldie Copper, de la Rosa, Goldie Snow and Bronze.

In the 1st phase of firing I decided to lave it for 1,5 hour in the kiln, on a steel net, the temperature was 350 C.

But after that I turned it up to 580 C just for Copper, for half an hour.

nothing bad happened;) it all looked well and I burried it in carbon.

In the second phase I decided to take a risk and go over the Snow Bronze temperature, I wasn’t sure if it won’t melt, but with Copper, de la Rosa Bronze and Goldie Bronze it seemed pointless to think these could sinter in a low temp.

So I went for Goldie Bronze temp. and left it in the kiln for 3 hours on 820 C, I also let it cool during the night and just went to sleep.

here’s what I found in the morning:

leaf patina m leaf patina back m

 

beautiful patina but with a small crack, so I repaired that and refired it again, 820 C or 40 minutes.

It all sintered nicely [not mentioning my usual Copper problems, but that’s a completely different story for another looong post;)]

The place for a natural garnet I picked before was filled with an investment that stopped clay from shrinking too much.

I tried different patinas, but decided to go with my usual liver of sulfur, gradually observing and trying to control the color that appeared during the process.

I remembered to give the piece as much polishing as possible without destroying the texture, that helps with patina colors a lot:)

bronze leaf2 m bronzeleaf daylight1m bronze leaf3 m

 

I had trouble making a picture of this piece, finally decided to try the natural light and it worked perfectly for the stone! Now you can see how it glows with it’s natural color:)

…hope someone will find that usefull, I still have no idea why I’m typing all that…;D

[it’s NOT] All About Me

I think I found a way to start this blog;

I cannot write about myself easly, I’m not even good in decent braging, so I had no clue what to do with a blog…

but now I realised that I finally have a thing I want to share;

I never participated in any class that would teach me how to make jewelry, I learned everything myself, so I thought I was not in a position to teach anyone. However my friend once demanded it, and since she’s quite a strong personality, all I could whisper was “yes”;) Although she is an artist herself she never even heard of metal clays, so imagine my face when she just took the bronze clay and made this:

Wolf's Paw

her name is Martyna Szczykutowicz, she lives in Poland, in Cracow just like me, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the last time you’ll hear about her:)

Martyna Szczykutowicz on Facebook