Opal spiral pin/pendant

I've been infatuated with the spiral form for a number of years and have used it as a design element in a great variety of jewelry designs. This is a pin that can also be worn as a pendant in a mixture of sterling silver, copper and gold with an Australian opal. Made in 2009 by Jima Abbott.

Small Mixed Metal Pendants

Carlie made these two small multi layered mixed metal pendants. The center domes are roller printed brass. The sun shapes are copper and the back layer is silver with a hand stamped design.

Mixed Metal Beads

Two of Jima's mixed metal beads made in 2014. Silver, copper and brass. The bead on the left is all connected with a piece of 3/16th of an inch brass tubing running through the center of each piece and riveted down on the ends. The bead on the right is cold connected but the piece in the center has  soldered elements on it.

Mandala Pendant

Carlie made this layered mandala pendant. The center roller printed dome is brass, the pierced and stamped layer under that is copper and the back support and bail are silver with one gold dome on the bail. The stone is Chinese turquoise. This was made in 2015.

Mixed Metal Bead Pendant

The bead form in the bottom part of the pendant was half of a pair  of beads that were going to be made into earrings but turned out to be heavier than I thought an earring should be. As often happens in my work the finished piece turns out differently than the original idea. This little bead has 9 pieces in it's construction, each of which I make. I cut each out of a sheet of copper or silver,  some are domed, some are notched. After polishing each piece I fit them on a piece of tubing which I then rivet the ends of to hold them all in place. The bead turns freely on the wire that attaches it to the rest of the pendant. Made of silver, copper and 14k gold in November of 2017.

Riveting & Soldering

I made this piece a few years ago when I was  hosting an open studio in the Mendocino Art Center jewelry studio. I was showing some beginning jewelers some thought on soldering wire and riveting layers of metal together using short pieces of 16 gauge wire. The wire shapes in the center are fine silver which bends very easily, the balls are argentium silver which fuses better than any metal I have tried fusing. The metal surrounding the silver wire is copper that has been heated to give it a colored oxide surface.

Jewel Creatures

 A number of years ago I started making jewelry in the form of a variety of creatures, mostly using copper and mixed metal designs and coloring the copper with heat. A lot of these designs are pin/pendants. I've always been fond of frogs so some of my first designs were those.
I've probably made 20 to 30 frogs in a variety of sizes and patterns over the last 25 to 30 years.

Turtles seemed like  an interesting form also so a few of them made an appearance also. Perhaps a half a dozen or so.

A few of the frogs I made in more complex designs like this frog on a leaf. I made one as a bola tie also.

I've probably made as many fish as I have frogs, this design I called my swirly fish. It has a pearl eye, silver swirls and gold balls and discs.

I've made 4 or 5 snail forms at times that I was infatuated with spiral forms.

Insects have always fascinated me also , I've taken hundreds of close up pictures of them with my digital cameras. Many of them seem like little moving jewels to me. I've also done a great many leaf forms like this copper one. When I lived in Nevada City 25 years ago, on one fall day I was walking through my back yard which bordered a creek and had huge oak trees and there were piles of leaves on the ground. As my feet pushed them around I thought to myself -they look like copper-. That rang a bell in my head and I started playing with making them out of copper that I colored with heat.

This is a more abstract bug form that I did a couple of years ago.

A few years ago my daughter Akeesa asked me to make a dragonfly pendant for her and that got me into creating a series of dragonflies, all a little different. This one is silver with a few gold elements and freshwater pearl eyes.

Maybe 20 years ago I made my first lizard form based on a series of drawings I was doing at the time. I've done perhaps 6 to 8 in this series, each a little different in texture and metal mixtures.

I have a really good customer in the San Francisco bay area that sometimes rescues abandoned iguanas. She has been asking me for about 5 or 6 years to make her an iguana pendant, even sending me large photographs of some of the iguanas she has had. I don't do very many special orders any more but wanted to do this one for her but it took a long time for the finished piece to be born. I finally got it done this spring and we were both happy with the finished piece. I do wish I had taken more time to get a better picture of it though. Oh well.