Jane Sheppard

Members of the Cumbria Sub group met at Underskiddaw for a one day workshop with Marion.

The first recommendation was to consider using small, relatively cheap, ready bought, sterling silver shapes (Cookson and others) as test pieces for trying out colours. This is much less time consuming and less ‘precious’ than using hand pierced and prepared frames and makes it much more likely you will get to know your colours well.

As the blanks will probably be thinner than the silver you may eventually want to use, it is a good idea to test fire them for 90 secs (perhaps less if quite small) at 900°C to be sure the silver will cope with the process. (Better to find out now if it will not, than after using precious enamel!)

It is good practice to find a suitable stilt before you begin applying enamels and then continue to use the same setup for each firing.

Depletion guild by firing and pickling 2, 3 times or more until white, this process will be covered in detail in most reference books or on the Guild silver DVD.