If you had told me a year ago that I would soon have aspirations as a jewelry designer, I would have been very confused. Aside from a short summer stint in high school as a kids’ sports camp counselor, my career has always been tied to a computer. I never imagined that I would want or be able to work with my hands. In hindsight this belief seems misplaced as nearly all of my interests and hobbies involved crafting, journaling, or moving my body through exercise.
Now my perfect days pretty much involve anything except a computer screen. I love drawing jewelry designs, making wax and metal pieces, taking photographs, and helping my mentors at the ileava jewelry store with customers and various tasks. Working with my hands makes it much easier to enter a “flow” state and enjoy the moment.
I’ll be 31 next month. A theme I’ve noticed with myself and many of my friends around my age is that after spending our late teens and most of our twenties sprinting at new goals, there is a gentle return to childhood interests in our thirties.
New ring
I finally finished the twisted band that I started designing a few months ago. Actually I “finished” the design weeks ago but made a somewhat expensive mistake - I tried to outsource the polishing for the first time. The polisher basically polished away all the ribboning detail. It didn’t look bad, but it wasn’t the design I wanted so I recast the ring and polished it myself. Lesson learned!
I originally made the ring in mitsuro, cast it in silver, then soldered on and filed a smooth back band before casting it in gold. It’s a pretty lengthy process for a simple design, but I like combining the striated texture of mitsuro with smooth metal parts (as opposed to keeping the entire piece with misturo’s ribboning).
This ring reminds me of a rippling river going around a bend or looping over a stone. It feels very organic and soft in form and I’m happy with how it turned out!
Current projects
This past week I spent about an hour in jewelry school modifying a pair of iron pliers to make it easier to bend wire. It felt strange to heat and file iron! Previously I thought iron and metal in general were unchangeable. My Sensei said that in Japan it is difficult to find some specific tools, so it is necessary to modify tools frequently to meet your needs.
I finished a sterling silver ring in school as well. It took about 12 hours of work to carefully file the symmetrical design! It was great practice though to advance my foundational techniques in measuring, filing, and polishing a piece. When I first started making jewelry, I thought 12 hours of work was an insane amount of time to spend on one piece - I’ve now realized that is a standard or low amount of time to spend on pretty much anything other than a plain band!
Recent inspirations
Perfect Days - a film by Wim Wenders following a toilet cleaner in Tokyo
Lex Fridman’s podcast episode with Robert Rodriguez - Robert shares his experiences as a filmmaker and the importance of creating a body of work versus focusing on individual projects