THOSE WONDERFUL STERLING SILVER PENDANTS

I love the artistry of the sterling silver pendants of the past. And they aren’t all sterling silver, either. I’ve seen some wonderful gold pendants as well.

I could easily use up a lazy afternoon thumbing through the pages of a glossy library book with pictures of ancient (and not so ancient) sterling silver and gold jewelry. As I look at those lovely detailed designs, it makes me realize how much time there was prior to the late 20th century.

I think it’s especially important for artists to feel that they have a lot of time in which to create. I dislike doing anything in a rush, but when it comes to creative endeavors, I really need to feel relaxed so the creative juices can flow unimpeded. I believe I can safely say that the artists who created Tiffany glass and Faberge eggs weren’t dashing them off in a mad hurry.

In the 1500s a popular European pendant design was of the ship, complete with rigging and sails made from gold, precious stones and enamel. Can you imagine the time put into one of these outrageously detailed pendants?

Sterling Silver has been a material of choice for pendants for many centuries

Sterling silver has been a favored material for designing pendants for centuries, often in combination with gold, enamel and both precious and non precious stones. I think the masters of silver jewelry work are the Native Americans, specifically the Hopi, Zuni and Navajo nations. Of course much of the Navajo jewelry is a combination of sterling silver and turquoise.

The Zuni carved masterful animal images from shell, turquoise, serpentine and abalone. Most of the ones I’ve seen were not specifically designed to be single pendants, but were quite small and strung more like beads. Kindred spirits to me, these makers of animal jewelry!

I’ve seen some wonderful sterling silver pendants created by Navajo artists. It’s rather odd, but silversmithing among this people began rather late. The earliest designs were coming from the mid 1800s, when they first began making silver jewellery inlaid with turquoise.

Sterling Silver Pendant Designs and Styles are Limitless

The marvelous thing about sterling pendants is that every artist has his or her own style, each pendant a small reflection of the designer’s vision. I have always loved creating small things, starting with a fascination with embroidery in the 1960s. (My stitches were miniscule!) Making pendants of little animals seemed a natural progression for me.

I think it would be heaven to spend an uninterrupted week crafting extremely detailed silver pendants in the style of the Art Nouveau movement. I was looking at some photographs of wonderful fantasy animals from that era and became suddenly envious of the time those artists had to devote to their craft!

I love designing sterling silver jewelry. To me, it’s a culmination of years working as an artist in a number of different media and art forms. I started out as a musician in the 1960s and “graduated” to visual art in the 1980s. It seems that creating jewelry was meant to be, as I’ve made a living as a jewelry artist for over 25 years now!

I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor- I have quite a few sterling silver pendants available in my online store.