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Informal Workshop Fun!

  • I had a houseful of folks come over yesterday to learn enamelling.  9 people pretty much filled up the room!   I live in Fayetteville, NC and had folks drive in from as far away as Charlotte, NC and Charleston, SC.

    Only one of the 9 people had ever done enameling before.  They all had fun, learned a new skill, and left happy. 

    My goal for the workshop for my students was to teach them the basics of enameling in a fun and imminently affordable way.  Most people don't have $500 or $1000 to spend only to learn they don't really enjoy doing that given art technique all that much.  This way, they could learn for a few dollars whether they were interested in doing this art.  If yes, they would now know enough to read and learn on their own, plus I'm giving them good sites to learn more from (this is #1 on the list), so they now have a worldwide support group.  If not, then at least they will have had a good time and truly appreciate how much work and talent is needed to make that enameled piece in a gallery - and not complain about the price.

    As for organizing the workshop, I told them to bring a box lunch and their own drinks, and $2 for supplies.  Most tossed in $5 instead.  It cost me some flux, a bit of enamel, some copper wire and a sheet of copper.  Oh, yeah, a bunch of saw blades 'cause I'm clumsy with the saw when I'm in a hurry.  (Ok, I'll be honest.  I'm always clumsy with it.)  They also agreed that I'm an amateur at this and that if they got hurt, it was their problem and not mine.


    I learned a lot from this workshop, too.  I learned a lot by preparing to teach the workshop.  I found lots of stuff in my books and magazine articles that I had forgotten or not grasped the significance of the first time thru them.  I learned a lot by thinking about how to organize the workshop, what to teach and how to teach it, and what kind of simple but fun shapes could I quickly and cheaply get ready beforehand.  I came up with some design ideas for pieces to make on my own later.

    I also learned some additional things afterwards, as I searched for solutions to the problems that had come up while making some of the pieces.  This was particularly valuable to me.  I have to fit in jewelry learning after my family, my day job, and my civic responsibilities take their turn in line for my time.  The students all made mistakes I would have made over the next year, but I got to learn all those mistakes in one day instead of having to experience them over the course of the next year.   If you're going to make the mistake, by all means be efficient at it and get it over with promptly!

     

    Because it's my home and not a jewelry classroom, I don't have individual workstations for each student, nor do I have a saw or kiln per student.  I knew I would have a chokepoint on my kiln and didn't want to add another one while people struggled with a jeweler's saw.  So I cut out a bunch of copper pieces ahead of time.  Because I had a number of cheap $6 file sets from Harbour Freight from other workshops I've taught, I didn't bother with filing them.  I left that to the students.

    For their first piece, I just wanted to get them to make something quickly, so it had to be simple and touch on a number of useful techniques.  I chose to use a nickle-sized disk that I punched out.  They were to sift a design on one side and do a cloissonne design on the other.  Once they had made that, they would know the basics. 

     

    I had other pieces cut out for them to choose from after that.  The leaf shapes, cut using a pattern from an oak leaf from my yard was particularly popular.   The stem of the leaf was rolled around to the back to make a bail for a necklace chain.   I had textured the metal in the rolling mill before cutting out the leaves, so they got to try basse taille as well.  Some of them got the idea of using the glass threads I had as the veining on the leaves. 

    The scarf pins I cut out weren't particularly popular, but the 104F temperature outside (and two kilns, a pickle pot, and 10 bodies radiating heat inside) might have had something to do with that.

    I hope others of you will consider opening up your homes to teach others how much fun enameling can be.  You don't have to be an expert at it to give someone a basic set of skills they can use to learn more on their own. 

    For those of you who do this professionally, I fully understand it's your livelihood and that you have to charge appropriately.  I don't think I'm taking business away from you, I'm more likely to be creating new enameling artists who will want to get better, more specialized training than I can offer.   Besides, I hope to be making a living at this some day, too, so I'll be charging at some point in the future, too.