For 15 years or so I taught various jewelry workshops at the Mendocino Art Center near where I live. For a number of years I also hosted a weekly open studio where I assisted people who came with jewelry making and design instruction and did demonstrations of techniques. The copper dome in this piece was an example of solder inlay, where I stamped deep patterns in the copper, flowed silver solder over the surface and then filed and sanded it until only the solder in the stamped depression remained. The center of this one got messed up and I was going to reject it when one of the students said I should cut it out and do something else in the center. I worked on it that week and brought the finished piece back to the next open studio. I heated the copper to build a layer of oxidation to bring out the contrast in colors. I created flaps by sawing around the edge of the back silver piece and bent them up to hold the copper dome and created of sawed shape with gold circles riveted on it to inset in the center. I was pleased with the result as was a customer who purchased it at the next art show that I sold my work at. This points out one of the things I miss now that I have retired from teaching, how absolute jewelry making beginners can often have interesting ideas that are useful. I've been making jewels for over 50 years now but often found that one of these beginners without preconceived notions could look at a situation and have an idea about how to do something that was better than the way I had been doing it for many years. I learned to listen and often adopted new ways of doing things because of this.
