Two weeks down
It’s odd to think it’s only been two weeks thus far. (+1 day if you include today) Week one wrapped up with a dinner get-together at the home Revere Academy shop manager, teacher and argentium silver afficiando Ronda Coryell.
The dinner get-together served as a great ice breaker between the two halfs of the larger class, as the interaction between the two during the day is fairly limited. Some good food, wine and stories all around made for a great night. Ronda was also kind enough to do several demonstrations on the fusing properties of argentium silver. It’s easy to see why she’s so enthusiastic about the metal; fusing it provides a clean seam with none of the solder clean-up you might run into with sterling silver.
Below you’ll find a photo of Ronda’s studio space. I am completely envious of the vast workbench area and the copious amount of tools. Hell, I’m envious of Ronda’s apartment as a whole. She’s made that space into one heck of a beautiful place to live.
Also pictured: The desk space I sit at in the mornings, with a small view. There have been people working on the windows on the building off to the right for the entire time I’ve been sitting there. I really wish I could determine what they’re doing, as there’s no way it’s just washing unless they’re the most diligent window washing crew I’ve ever seen.
Lastly pictured, a shot of my little tool container which I use to shuttle my tools between the classroom and studio space. I know it doesn’t look like close to $1k in tools, but it came pretty close. (+ a few books & polishing tools not pictured). *twitch*
Week two involved making round, pierced earrings and various type of stone setting. I caught some sort of cold bug that quickly turned into a sinus infection and asthma hell around mid-week. This taught me a fairly valuable lesson about my ability to work while sick. That being that I really shouldn’t if possible. With my brain that fuzzy I caught myself making ridiculous mistakes and fumbling tasks that I normally don’t have a hard time with. This of course leads to frustration and poor overall confidence. It’s all a learning experience though and I did a fairly good job of not taking it too seriously. These things happen and I learned quite a bit along the way.
Week two wrapped up with a trip to see the King Tut exhibit at the de Young museum. Much conversation was had over how on earth the artists of that time accomplished the work they did with the limited tools of that period in history. A lot of the work would have been impressive using the tools available today, let alone what was available then.
Week three is off to a better start, though I’m still at the tail end of ye olde lungcrud. I sound horrible, but am at least feeling a bit more up to actually doing work. Today we learned a bit about casting and converted a piece of square wire into two half round pieces of wire through the use of magic! (or a draw plate and some tongs) I look forward to seeing what comes of it tomorrow.
Pics of actual worth forthcoming. I attempted to take some last week but the results were poor.
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ossom!