Perfection in Jewelry Making

June 20, 2022

I was working on a piece of jewelry yesterday and noticed that the metal curved a bit. My intention was for it to be straight. We’re talking about a curve of maybe ½ a millimeter. But do you know where my brain went immediately?

“Okay, here’s one for the garbage pile.”

Then I stopped myself and realized I was going against everything I believe in…. and I’d been GOING there for awhile now.

Here’s what I tell OTHER jewelry artists, “It’s not SUPPOSED to be perfect. You don’t WANT it to look like it came out of a machine. So long as the piece has structural integrity, and that any ‘flaws’ do not limit its intended use, it is a perfectly good piece of jewelry… perfectly good, if not better.”

And here I was, ready to toss out a perfectly good ring because there was a slight curve where I’d intended things to be ruler straight.

Sigh…

It’s a fine line I walk.

I think part of the problem with my mentality is that my design aesthetic is usually for very stark and minimalist pieces with precise lines and shapes. Sometimes it’s much easier to spot flaws in minimalist jewelry than in more elaborate pieces.

Then serendipitously, a framed piece of wall art fell off my workshop wall today and as I was putting it back, I read the artist’s statement printed on the back of the painting. Here’s an excerpt:

“[Katsumi Sugita] was trained in a variety of media, but he settle on brush painting because of its directness and immediacy. Because it is not correctable, it expresses a feeling directly to paper.

“”It is deceiving in its simplicity and its apparent ease. When a painting is simple, it is easier to see the errors. The simpler the painting, the more flawless it must be. My paintings express a feeling of simplicity. This comes through the expression of one feeling, not conflicting feelings, in each painting.””


It suddenly dawned on me that I’m betting one of the reasons I love minimalist art work is because my inner me is always striving for simplicity of life.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I look for when admiring jewelry in a store, at a show, or online.  And if I think about it, that's all I have to do to my jewelry too.

Here are the things I look for:

  1. It must not look machine made.  It must look/feel like something that someone used their hands to make.
  2. It must look high quality.  Just because something is made by hand rather than spewed out by a machine does not mean it should look like a third-grade art project.  I must be able to discern a certain level of technical skill from the artist.  Quality materials usually play into that too.
  3. It must be unique.  I want something that resonates with my personal aesthetic and not be the latest trend on the block.  A piece of jewelry I would have something to say about if asked... a story behind the piece whether that story is the inspiration or meaning behind the design or if it's a sharing of the technique involved in the making... or maybe even just information about the artist.  My jewelry has to have a story of some sort.

If that's what I look for when *I* want jewelry, it makes sense that that's the kind of jewelry I should be making too.