[Jewelry making - Article 01138] - Re: [Orchid] Jewelry in the 80s

[Stephen Walker]

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    I was in the Metalsmithing department at Syracuse University when
    the price on silver and gold ran up. A group of us students pooled
    our money to buy 12 inch wide silver sheet and saw the amount of
    silver we could get for our cash cut in half before the order was
    filled. The way I dealt with the high prices myself was to work
    mainly in brass, copper and bronze with some sterling. I was mainly
    doing mokume and I figured that mixed metals were not valued for
    their precious metal content, so I might be just as well off if I
    stayed with base metals. With hindsight I see that I would have done
    much better if I had used more gold and other precious materials,
    but I was caught up in a sort of shoestring budget mentality. I was
    not alone. There was a lot of "art-ware" jewelry being made in the
    1980's that was made of non-precious materials. Big earrings and the
    like were a lot of fun and so were alternative materials. This kind
    of thing did not begin in the 1980s, but I would bet that a lot of
    talent was deverted to alternative materils due to the higher cost
    of silver and gold at that time. 

Stephen Walker

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