I don't blog, I muse. And not even very regularly. Whenever the muse strikes.

Commissions

Sometimes you get a commission that sings, hits the spot. I enjoy the dichotomy of commissioned pieces - the joy but also the dread. Will the client like it, did I interpret the brief right, did I listen between the lines. The muse visits me in all kinds of disguises, at times she comes at night. And that was the case with the necklace on the right. The piece was a commission from a customer who purchased a bracelet from me at a show. She called me to ask for a special birthday piece, for her friend Tonia. I spoke to my client for a while. The birthday was a special one, a milestone and whilst talking to the customer I had the incling of an idea. The seed grew, that night I dreamt of the piece and what it should be.

It is a hammered sterling pendant with fine silver handmade maple leaves, handmade lampworked beads in shades of orange and purple, noble carnelian and spiritual amethyst. The idea for the hammered piece came from the strength of women, we get a few hard knocks but get up again. Maple is for wisdom, coming with age and I have added a dot of 24k gold that I panned out of a some river in Africa almost 2 decades ago. For some reason I had to use amethyst for the spirit and when my customer came to collect the piece, I understood the reason. It turned out that Tonia is a medium, and perhaps I picked up on some of that with the stones and the pendant. Last I heard she was very happy with the necklace.

Like I said, the muse works in mysterious ways. I had never created a piece like this before.