[Jewelry making - Article 00644] - Re: [Orchid] The Incredible Shrinking Lapidary Journal

[Mona Clee]

========[ Invite a Friend - http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm  ]========

    After reading everybody's comments, I'm afraid there may not be a
    good solution for LJ because its space is now so constrained by
    economics.  Back in the good ole days of the mid-1990's, when LJ was
    close to 200 pages in length, it could have articles on lapidary
    issues, metalsmithing, PMC (when that began making its appearance),
    and beading articles too.  There was still so much room in the
    magazine that everybody got to have a piece of cake and go away
    happy.  Now you have to disappoint the metalsmiths to please the
    beaders, and so on.  And dammit, that really annoys the metalsmiths
    because the beaders already have Bead & Button magazine, Beadwork
    magazine, and half of Art Jewelry magazine, but that's not enough,
    no they have to also soak up some of LJ's increasingly scarce pages. 

    Because it used to have so much room, LJ could attract people
    interested in one medium and turn them on to others in the process. 
    I actually had little interest in lapidary when I began subscribing
    to LJ, I was gobbling up any printed material about metalsmithing,
    but after exposure to all those lapidary articles I ended up taking
    several lapidary courses and getting a lot out of them. 

    Now, sadly, when I grab my copy of LJ out of the mailbox I'm hoping
    against hope that there will be one decent metalsmithing article,
    not still more PMC and still more beads.  Not that I have anything
    against beads or PMC, they provided my entry into jewelry making.  I
    still love them both and still make beaded jewelry and PMC pieces. 
    But more and more often it seems like there is one lapidary feature
    in "Step by Step," and the rest of the space is divvied up between
    PMC and beads.  More challenging jewelry crafts simply don't make
    the cut as often as they used to.  (And so, gang, I'm not sure that
    having Orchid folk submit more articles to LJ is going to help at
    all, not if they are locked into chasing the beaders and are
    avoiding articles about scary things like torches, saws and
    hammers). 

    I knew we were at the top of the slippery slope when the word "easy"
    began to crop up on the cover of LJ.  :-)

____________________________________________________________________
T h e   O r c h i d   L i s t
Open Electronic Forum for Jewelry Manufacturing Methods and Procedures
____________________________________________________________________
Orchid FAQ:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/faq.htm
Orchid Archives:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/archive
Orchid Galleries:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/gallery.htm
Invite a Friend:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm
____________________________________________________________________
Tips From The Jeweler's Bench - Article Archive
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/tip_sear.htm
The Jeweler's Selected Bibliography List
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/jewelry-books
Buy Orchid Jewelry:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/shop
____________________________________________________________________
-Unsubscribe:
-Email: orchid-request AT ganoksin.com Body=unsubscribe subject=blank
____________________________________________________________________