Musings

KEUM BOO The keum boo process comes to us from eastern Asia, most notably Korean. As I was reflecting on it, it occurred to me that there are many similarities between keum boo and life. The process has been around for over 1,000 years and is a process of joining fine or pure gold with…

TALKING STONES I love to cut cabochons.  I enjoy the entire process from getting the stones, whether slabs or rough, shaping them and finally polishing them.  To me the entire process is like a treasure hunt; you never know what you’ll find. One of the cool things about buying a rock is seeing if the…

AHH, SPRING! Ahh, spring, and a young man’s thoughts turn to…jewelry!  Actually, my thoughts pretty much always turn to jewelry.  I’m forever looking for inspiration for a new piece or technique.  I’m draw to uniqueness, whether in jewelry, painting, sculpture, or nature itself. We always think of Spring as the season of new life, new…

MAKE MINE TURQUOISE I love turquoise.  I want more turquoise.  I love cutting and polishing it and making jewelry out of it. I’ve been fortunate to have had a couple of friends give me some turquoise over the course of the years, and that makes it very special. One of the things I love about…

NECESSITY IS A MOTHER! Way back when, I was madly in love with a Greek girl. Still am; I put a ring on it! Anyway, I wanted to make her a cuff and knowing she liked flowers, I pondered how I could do it.  The design I came up with was a plain silver cuff…

WHO’S YOUR TRIBE? I love tribal stuff.  I love African Adinkra symbols. I love rock art & petroglyphs. I love the Scottish Clans, Native Americans, and Japanese Samurai.  Though very different, the one thing that all of these things have in common is that they represent belonging. In our hectic society today, we’ve lost a…

MARRIAGE? I was thinking about combining different materials and metals, sometimes called “Marriage of Metals” and what it takes to bring them together successfully. Of course, as my mind wanders (and wonders) I started thinking about marriage in general and my marriage to Roxanne in particular. Marriage is a funny thing when you get right…

INSPIRATION People comment on my jewelry and invariably someone will ask me ‘how did you come up with that?’  The truth is usually that I have no idea, but then I would have nothing to write about, so let’s delve a little deeper into the creative process. Inspiration is where you find it. Some people…

SADDLE UP I want to talk about saddles for a moment.  Saddles you say? What’s this about? Let me explain. If you dissect a saddle, it curves in two directions.  Using a horse as our guide, you have a ‘U’ curve pointing up from nose to rump. You also have a ‘U’ curving down both…

I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP One of the most gratifying moments I’ve ever had while teaching occurred a couple of years ago at Bead Fest Philly.  I was teaching a ring class where you had to solder silver balls on you piece.  Silver balls are notorious for not cooperating. They seem to have…