Geometric Jewels / 1 Million Karats

Monday12-3-07  Buttons or Pendants?

When I sit down at my torch, that, is the question

I usually ask myself. As you can see from my

current listings this week, the buttons won.

            I don’t see a whole lot of  lampworkers

that  produce ”Studio Buttons” for sale on Ebay.

If you know of any others I would love to see their work.

I have combined my love of “Dichroic Glass”

with my passion for producing these little collectible dichroic buttons.

            When I first started making my buttons

I used brass shanks because I was told that collectors

didn’t  really care about the bottoms of their buttons then

I tried using Sterling silver for my shanks and found

that they seemed to actually have some appeal to many

of my customers. It is no easy task to bury a piece of silver

that melts at 1760 degrees into a piece of glass that

becomes molten at 2000 degrees. It took much practice and

many melted pieces of silver wire to develop

a technique that works. The reason I changed from using

Sterling Silver to using .9999 Fine Silver is primarily

because it does not turn black (called fire scale) in the flame

like Sterling silver does. The reason that it does is because

it is 7.5% copper. Most people don’t know that. Some times

when you see a piece of Sterling you will see the numbers .925

which stands for 92 ½% which means the remaining  7 ½% is copper.

Sterling silver is used in the majority of jewelry because it is

harder and easier to work with, but definitely not as

valuable as Fine Silver. The reason I can make Fine Silver

work as a shank is because of the size of the piece that I use.

Anything larger than 8mm across would make it impractical.

I do still use Sterling for some of my shanks simply because

of its harder property….in fact one of my listings this week, “Sun Spot”

has a carved  Sterling shank.  As a collectors item I think in future

years the silver shanks will add more value and rarity to my pieces

Let me know what you think of  the Silver vs. Brass shank dilemma.