Magpie's Workbench: all jewelry makers welcome

Me, I'm metal-bending. Sterling silver wire, to be exact; twenty gauge half hard, twenty-two gauge dead soft, and some twenty-four gauge half hard or full hard that was lying around left over from something else. (It might have started out as half hard, or even as dead soft, but it's been handled and transported and flexed and re-coiled enough that it's work-hardened considerably. If there were such a thing as three-quarter hard, that'd be what this wire is.

Oh, the joys of sterling silver wire. I love how it takes pressure, how you can use your fingers to slip down the wire and leave a curve behind, with much the same sort of movement and pressure as when you slide a scissor-edge along a piece of ribbon to make it spring into curls. The sterling silver curls aren't ringlets, but they have a fine organic grace when obtained by hand-shaping, in my opinion. Then again, I'm easy for botanical forms and balance-without-symmetry, and much prefer this particular kind of free-form hand-shaped springy "live curve" wireworking to any jig-formed symmetry. Don't get me wrong -- there's gorgeous symmetry out there too, and people doing beautiful work... but it's not what sings to me personally. Give me something full of Fibonacci series fun any time.

Here's something with a few of those curves. This one was a lot of fun to make:

( The Mermaid Carries A Picture Of Home )

That one's in gold filled wire, rather than sterling. I still prefer how sterling silver bends. Here's a sterling one with some fairly nice organic curves. (I mean the large curves, not the little spiral ornamental doodads.) I got rather literal about the botanical aspects, in this one:

( She Is Risen )



So what's on your workbench? Have you been working with wire lately?