24/10/20 Balls for All! The Secrets of Granulation in Sterling Silver with Nisa Blackmon - VIDEO ONLY

RECORDED LIVE ON: Sunday, October 20, 2024  Instructor: Nisa Blackmon Granulation is a 5,000-year-old jewelry technique in which tiny spheres (“granules”) of gold or silver are fused or soldered to a metal base in decorative patterns. The process was long thought to be “lost” by Western jewelry gatekeepers but has actually been widely used by humble metalsmiths to enhance their ethnic and cultural jewelry designs for centuries. This beautiful technique has resurfaced in recent years and now you can learn the basics in just a couple of hours (five millennia not required)! In this workshop, students will learn how to create their own sterling silver granules of desired sizes, arrange them in traditional and contemporary patterns, and fuse them to sterling sheet and wire without the need for solder. Further uses for and alteration of granulated components will also be discussed. Granulation of gold and fine silver has a reputation for being “finicky,” fussy, and difficult, requiring speci