Category: Tipp

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If you’re looking to learn a load of new skills and level up your metalsmithing game (or you know someone who is), you might be interested in my new offer of One-to-One workshop training, either online (so you can work in your own space wherever that may be in the world) or in person in my workshop in North Wales (with added beautiful landscape, homemade soup, tea and biscuits). Vouchers are available for full or partial payment, please reply to this email or call me on +44 7789402481 if you’d like a chat about it.

Are you a jewellery designer or silversmith and want to gain experience in the DIVA Atelier in 2024? A residency at DIVA is a chance to grow as a maker and to reflect on your work and creatively explore new ideas.Those participating in DIVA’s artists-in-residence programme will reap the benefits of time for research, the space and tool required for experimentation as well as support in their specific field. It is also an opportunity to benefit from access to the museum’s excellent specialist library and to become better acquainted with the rich and diverse museum collection. More information. For a residency in 2024, the museum expects your application before February 18, 2024.

You will find additional information and a registration form on the website of DIVA.

Artist and Goldsmith Joy Bonfield-Colombara – Joy BC – was interviewed for London Craft Week. Joy’s work challenges pre-existing notions of precious materials, and ingrained societal ideals of western female bodies in sculpture. She enjoys playing with mythologies and re-examines the fascination with the ‘Classical’.

Read the full interview.

Picard Gmbh in Wuppertal, Germany, is one of the largest hammer manufacturers. They have years of experience and set high standards for their steel and surface treatments. They are therefore very skilled in making hammers, but they often fall short in their names. Apparently they use Google Translate or something similar to translate the names. The results are terrible and often misleading. I asked a German acquaintance to talk to Picard, but he couldn’t find anyone in the company to talk to or who would take the problem seriously.
If you look on ebay, you will see resellers all over the world quoting Picard descriptions. Here I give you two examples.

First a hammer advertised as a polishing hammer (New Picard 2 headed polishing hammer 017001-0375). This does not make sense.

The second example is called a chasing hammer (NO!). The latter is perhaps for raising (it will stretch the silver / not great), but I’d say bouging.

The problem is in the whole range of hammers. If a new student tries to find a chasing hammer and buys it, he will lose a lot of money and will waste a lot of time in his work. As a silversmith I only looked at the hammers I use myself. So I don’t know if this problem also occurs with other professions or with other types of tools. What I do know is that Picard misleads silversmith students and beginners through incorrect naming. After all, resellers of their products copy and paste Picard’s original description into their catalog or website. Picard also makes a ‘grooving’ hammer. I think I would call this a collet hammer.

An English company I spoke to saw the problem and expressed the intention to help. But in the end nothing happened, I think because they thought it was too big and too time consuming to solve. That is why I call on Picard and others to use corrective names. The best and inarguable sources of correct information are old text books (eg Finegold and Seitz) and not just opinions like mine. If we do so, we prevent that in a few years there will be no one old enough to know better and the trade in tools will be damaged by incorrect misleading information.

And is it wrong if you don’t know the name of your tools? I have been using very large scissors for 40 years, but I never knew their name. Recently I found their name in a 100 year old metalworking textbook. They are called Scotch Shears. I just shared this information directly on Instagram (@adrian.hope, 10/7/22)

I think it is an almost insoluble problem. The only answer I can see is a large poster / picture illustrating (to be displayed in every studio??) all the hammers we use 2 or 3 views of each hammer to show exact differences and weights. Their names in German, English, etc. There will be some with more than one name and some with more than one use.
It would probably be best to find a group of (elderly) smiths to sit around a table and hammer it out (sorry small British joke).

Adrian Hope