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Parent Category: Technical Articles from Journal Back Copies

Category: Technical Articles 2008

Notes from Dorothy Cockrell’s workshop

At the US Enamelist Society’s conference in 2005, a Mexican artist (Maria Perez) ran a workshop on embossing. Maria’s work on fine silver is very detailed and complex, at times she incorporates semi-precious stones in it and some of it is enamelled. Dorothy had a 3 day tutorial from her in Mexico City; and used just one of her techniques, line embossing which is suitable for enamelling, for our conference workshop. The raised lines form the design and help to keep the different colours of enamel in their place.

As the metal has to be very thin (0.15mm approx.) the finished enamel is not strong, so it must be mounted on a suitable base.

The students began by working on small squares of pewter. This is soft and more easily worked than either copper or fine silver. After learning the basic technique, they moved on to a piece of fine silver so that fire scale was not a problem and enamelling could proceed quickly.

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