The Sputnik Necklace
Something Old, Something New
When you’re getting married, and your mother and grandmother can’t be there, the next best thing is to have something that reminds you of them, worn right up against your heart. This was the case for this Sputnik Necklace.
Ms H was getting married and she wanted a necklace for the big day. We looked at some design ideas together and she quickly pointed out an image of a vintage sputnik earring, she asked if I could do a version of a sputnik with the stones from the heirloom jewellery. And with that, the design direction was decided!
Because the whole pendant was being made from repurposed gold, all of the elements of the pendant needed to be fabricated from scratch. A dome and tubing (of multiple diameters). Once this was all created, the a lot of careful soldering was required, soldering onto a curved surface comes with challenges, but slow and steady won this race!
Repurposing jewellery takes time, patience and a lot of work! See below for the summary of the process and the process in images.
Here’s a summary of the process:
Test all the jewellery to check that it is gold and what carat it is.
Remove all the stones
Prepare to melt down the gold in a crucible.
The melted gold gets poured into a mould and becomes an ingot. This is now ready to be manipulated into the many shapes and sizes of the elements that I need for the jewellery.
Create the elements. In this case, I was making lots of tubes in different sizes. This bit is time consuming, but fun! Also creating the central dome for all the little towers.
Trying the gemstones stones and pearls on for size.
Pre-polish all the individual elements before soldering it all together.
Soldering - this is a slow and steady process with so many different elements. Each element gets soldered on separately, and great care and attention to not heat the recently soldered items so that they fall off!
After each soldering session, the piece needs to soak in a warm pickle solution to get all the oxidisation off from the flames.
Polished and textured and all the stones are sat in place waiting to be set!
All done!
Ready to be worn (down the aisle!)
If you’d like to have a chat about your very own project, send me an email on christina@carlsson1064 and we’ll set up a meeting, virtual or face to face.
I can’t wait to be a part of your Jewellery Story!