Recent article for a friend's blog in Norway, NorthernChowk.com:
If anyone had ever told me that I’d become a modern day alchemist, transforming wet clay into solid silver, gold, copper or bronze, I would’ve laughed out loud.
My childhood home, a farmhouse near Athi River in Kenya, was filled with pieces of African jewelry: brilliantly colored Samburu necklaces; moon-hued, aluminum Ethiopian beads; hammered silver Tuareg crosses and intricately ornate Maasai collars. I remember the beaded ostrich eggshell necklaces I wore as a toddler. These works of art—stitched, strung, hammered or woven on someone’s lap, still fragrant with the smoky scent of an African home compound—inspired my life-long passion for jewelry and the methods used to create it.
Along with virtually every other human being on earth, jewelry is a source of pleasure, comfort and allegory to me. It is one of our oldest forms of currency. Gifted at the occasions of love, coming of age, marriage, childbirth and death, jewelry exemplifies our deepest feelings and marks our pivotal moments—almost an extension of the human body.
Over the years I’ve furrowed my brows, cursed in multiple languages and blistered my fingertips exploring ancient and modern jewelry making techniques from around the world. As it turns out, I fell in love with a medium unknown to our ancestors, created in the last decade—precious metal clay.
Developed in the early ‘90s by a Japanese metallurgist, metal clay combines microscopic particles of metals like gold, silver, bronze or copper, with an organic binder. The damp clay can be molded, sculpted and carved—it’s pliable enough to pick up the imprint of a strawberry’s skin. But when heated to a high temperature, the binding clay burns away and the tiny metal particles fuse to form solid metal. A lump of clay, a “flash” of fire and VOILA, a chunk of pure silver!
Jewelry making extends back 75,000 years (when the first mollusk, and soon after ostrich eggshell, bead strands were worn). Our metalworking skills date back some 6,000 years. Metal clay is still in its infancy, claiming roughly a decade of use. In my mind, it completely changes the game for metal artisans. Manipulating pure metal in a soft, cool form, is a first in the history of metallurgy.
Each time I open the kiln to reveal my transformed pieces, I’m astonished. Every day I work with the clay, I find inspiration. I’m riding a new wave of human innovation and creativity, in a novel medium. Each piece I make offers lessons, as well as new connections and discoveries, shared among those of us experimenting with the clay. I draw on age-old traditions of jewelry making, but unlike my forbears, I have the added pleasure of being able to turn a lump of clay into solid gold.
~ Anwyn Hurxthal, Modern Day Alchemist
