I have just added a starter kit for enamelers that includes a 1.25" Sunray fine silver disk, 12" of cloisonne' wire, directions with some sample patterns and a piece of transfer paper to get your design onto your flux coat. Contact me if you want one (or more!)

Hello fellow enamelers! If you are looking for the awesome engine turned background for your enameling project(s) - let us know, we are here to help! Check out the newest tab on our website titled "For Enamelers" to get more information. Thank yo to all of you for your patronage and support in keeping this nearly lost art alive!

Today was the day! The client that inspired the Dragonfly series of pendants came today to pick out her pendant at the shop in Morro Bay, today! I made a number of them to choose from. She has a special story with Dragonflies.... After her father passed away she was visiting a Garden and was followed by an orange dragonfly the entire time. As her and her husband were leaving, the dragonfly buzzed in front of their car until they left the parking lot. The most interestin

After sharpening the cutter and doing some honing in, I drop in another piece of copper to see where I am at. It is real close, but not quite there. The segments of the dragonfly abdomen are not engraving the way I would like but the background is showing up nicely. Now I patina a piece of copper black so I can really see the non-engraved parts really well. The abdomen is almost there but I will need to bring the background forward a little bit more. Just about there! This

Now that the patterns are made and loaded into the Brocade Engine the real work begins. A little bit on brocade engines as they are a little controversial. Some people lump brocade engines into Guilloche' equipment (ex: Martin Matthews in his book on Engine Turning) and some people do not (ex: Calina Shevlin in her book on Guilloche'). There are some big differences between the two (from the viewpoint of the artist - not machine design or mechanical differences). First, th

Yes, it has been too long since the last blog entry! I thank Doug, the instigator of this, and the next several blogs, for the impetus to add some new blogs! This is about a dragonfly that has been waiting a year to be created and its fruition. I decided this was going to be a dual pattern design: in the foreground is the dragonfly, the background is the hint of reeds from a pond - the perfect place to find the dragonfly. Here are the pattern placed in the brocade engine.