Friends Sharing the Art of Enameling

My first attempt at repousse work

Friends who love making jewelry, working with metals, and enameling will go the ends of the earth – or to the middle of nowhere, it seems - for the love of their art. That is how little Lamar became host to an art-jewelry mini-workshop last weekend.

Two friends visited my studio for a few days of fun, experimentation and learning.  Oh, we could have spent hundreds of dollars traveling to exotic venues for a fancy symposium on enameling or repousse. Could have turned it into a mini-vacation, complete with fine dining and scenic overlooks. But all of that would have been wasted on the incurable jewelry enthusiasts that we are. No possibility of those kinds of distractions in Lamar!

On Friday, Rose Marie from Denver, and I experimented with repousse on copper sheeting, fabricating additional tools out of wood dowels as we needed them. We picked up a second pitch pot at WalMart. (They called it a single-egg skillet, but we didn’t correct them.) Great fun.

On Saturday, Sandy from Colorado Springs, joined us and we turned to enameling. By Sunday we began working in cloisonne. Both of my guests went home with beautiful earring drops and a passion for a new jewelry technique.

And while we played, our poor husbands, out here in the middle of nowhere,  had to entertain themselves. They toured the John Martin Dam, followed the Arkansas Valley canal systems, visited the archaeological site of Bent’s fort, then trekked into the prairie to the site of the Sand Creek Massacre, and finally explored the Colorado Green Wind Energy installation. Poor things. So little to do out here.