Professional Jewelry Making - Brynmorgen Press

the metal is being transformed, how the tools affect it, and
what it should look like when completed. While you are
making a new piece, keep a journal in which you can take
notes and make sketches. You could even place the finished
piece of jewelry on a copy machine and paste the
image into your journal.
Above all, enjoy yourself. The purpose of undertaking
these projects is to build and improve your skills. Take the
time required, without distraction, to do your best. While
the purpose is to challenge yourself and learn new skills, do
not attempt a project that is too far beyond your current
level. It is more rewarding to complete a simpler project
well than to struggle and meet frustration at every turn in a
more advanced one.
This book is intended for anyone interested in making jewelry
and doing fine metal work. For beginners it provides a
graduated course of study in the art of making jewelry, with
an emphasis on hand skills. For experienced jewelry bench
workers, the projects provide a chance to increase technical
versatility. And for the jewelry collector, historian, and
merchant, this book demystifies one of humankind’s oldest
and most refined art forms.
The projects are presented clearly and concisely, with stepby-step
instructions for replication in a small jewelry workshop,
with photographs and text to show how to hold each
tool and fabricate the components of each project. Instructions
reveal trade secrets and tricks that are rarely taught in
schools and seldom shared in today’s jewelry industry.
Preface xi
An old master once said, “The art of
jewelry making is really very simple
and can be summarized by ten techniques.
However,” he said with a smile,
“there are ten thousand tricks.”
Begin counting.