From Dull Clay to Sparking Silver

I thought I would blog the process of how silver clay ends up up as a wearable piece of silver jewellery. What I am going to illustrate is the part of working with silver clay that I find the most fascinating and exciting. Turning something that starts off so brittle and delicate and ends up as a shiny solid pendant.


The picture above is a disk about 1" in diameter in what is known as its 'green state'. This is where the silver clay has been left to dry and is ready for firing. It has a dusty grey look and feels rather delicate to handle. At this stage it can be filed, sanded, drilled, carved, and pretty much anything you can do with regular clay.
Before this stage while the clay was moist, I stamped it and made holes in which I set 3x small Ruby's, 1 x Garnet and 1 x Peridot ready to be fired into the piece.
Its not perfect I know, but this was my first attempt so things can only get better with time.

After firing with a torch the piece takes on its metallic feel with a dull white surface that looks and feels dusty. This is not a dust, it is silver particles not laying in a uniform pattern to reflect the light so it looks dull.

The picture below shows the difference it makes to the areas that have been burnished to lay the silver particles flat with the back of a stainless steel spoon. An agate burnishing tool is most useful at this stage but mine was at the bottom of the tools box when I was at this stage so needs must and I grabbed a spoon to use instead. It has a long way to go yet so I have time to dig out the burnishing tools for additional shine.
The area with the bright shine around the edge of the disk shows where I have just rubbed the back of the spoon across the surface to burnish it.



This next picture shows the back of the disk, and you can see the indentations from the Teflon sheet I used to roll the clay out onto. You can also see the holes I made for the gem stones, and the bail made from a piece of fine silver attached with clay paste onto the pendant.



Finally you can see that now the shine is beginning to appear and the disk is looking more like a piece of silver jewellery almost ready to be worn.



I fired it once more to raise the rough surface again in order to apply an area of 22Kt Gold Keum-Boo then burnished again to set the gold in place.
It is nearly ready to wear now, I just need to give it a polish with a good cloth to further smooth off any scratches and it will be ready to enjoy.


I hope you have enjoyed reading this post, and I hope it inspires you to give silver art clay a go for yourself.

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