For the love of wire
Being or becoming a wire art jeweler can be a most fascinating adventure and even lead to an inspired and satisfying career. It can also be a frustrating journey at times, especially when you’re looking to enhance your skills by exploring new, untried techniques. That’s what this site is all about: learning and exploring both new and old wire jewelry making techniques.
I’ve been an art jeweler for over 20 years although I think my path has been slightly different from most. While I have created and successfully sold three jewelry lines, that’s not what’s driven my wire work. Early on in my career, I became fascinated with wire techniques and set about trying to create my own or at least to find unique deviations from existing techniques.
For over 20 years, night after night, I tried pushing the wire into all manner of variation. As a result, I accumulated a large body of work and wire experiments, many of them unique and successful. Most importantly, I focused on fast and simple techniques that produce complex looking results. Also, most of these techniques require no soldering.
While this site originated with my books, Make Wire Beads and Fiberwire Beads and Jewelry, many years ago, it is now focused to include some of those hard-won new techniques in the form of downloadable tutorials. Some of these tutorials come from my out of print books. All of the tutorials are either project tutorials where you’re instructed on making a particular jewelry design, or there are technique tutorials. Unlike some technique tutorials, the ones on this site clearly instruct on the basics necessary for accomplishment, but more importantly, they also explore the techniques in depth. Have you ever attended a workshop on a particular technique and then gone home excited but uncertain how to integrate the technique into your own work? Well, all of my books and techniques help prevent that by their thorough investigation.
My latest technique tutorial, Make Woven Wire Jewelry, is a great example of learning what you can do with one simple weaving technique. It's scheduled for release in May of 2011 so please email me at wired@beadifferent.com if you'd like special notice.