Turquoise Trees

More stone set pendants to show you today! These are, I think, very different from my usual work, and I am very pleased with them. I mentioned a while back that Brenda, a friend of mine who I first met when she started coming to my workshops, has become addicted to buying beautiful cut stones. So addicted that she's started selling them to fund her habit and also to fund more private tuition with me! I think it's a great addiction to have as she keeps bringing round absolutely beautiful stones for me to see - I get to see most of them first! How cool is that?! I have taken them into college for my advanced class to admire though, so I'm not completely greedy.

The stone in the pendant above was one of the first stones I bought from Brenda. I knew straight away that it had to be made into a tree. The trunk has been hand cut from silver sheet and decorated with silver balls to represent the fruit from the tree. The whole tree has been backed with silver to add extra strength to the piece, and I lightly oxidised the piece before setting the stone to highlight the different levels of silver.

And then Brenda brought this second Iranian turquoise round (amongst many others!) - so I just had to make another tree! The chains on both are handmade, and I'm particularly pleased with the clasps. I knew that I had to think carefully about where to ask for the hallmark to be stamped. If it was placed on the back of the trees themselves the whole setting could be damaged. I designed the clasps in the shape of leaves to hook over the links in the chain and asked for the hallmark to be put on the backs of them. As an added bonus the clasps can be hooked onto any of the links, allowing the chain length to be altered according to what you are wearing. The chain is fairly wide (but still open and light) which helps to comfortably support the pendant around your neck.By the way, I have imaginatively called them "Turquoise Tree" and "Turquoise Tree Too"!

P.S. If you buy Beads and Beyond regularly you may recognise the first pendant from the hallmarking article I wrote as I used it to illustrate planning your designs for hallmarking.


P.P.S. Brenda is in the process of setting up an etsy shop to sell her stones - if you're very nice to me I might tell you when it's open!