Jill Leventon

Having been enamelling for several years, I fancied trying my hand at some silver work. I started asking around, but no-one I knew then had done any, and most uttered dark tales of noxious substances and incredible difficulty. Then Penny Gildea held a workshop for us in Region 4, but unfortunately I was unable to attend. One or two enthusiasts tried their hand at our next workshop, but one participant managed to do dire things to nitric acid, which put us all off!

I started reading everything I could, gleaning snippets from articles and books, but it all still seemed to involve noxious substances and incredible difficulty. One glimmer of light lodged in my mind - somewhere I read that firestain is only a major problem under yellows and browns (I'm not guaranteeing the truth of that!), so I cut out a pair of birds, annealed them in the kiln, pickled them in (clean) safety pickle and enamelled them blue. The resultant earrings were a great success. I used the same technique with opaque enamels (surely firestain can't be a problem under them?) - again, no problems. Was this purely beginners’ luck?

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