Embellished Forks Make Art Jewelry

We're all accustomed to seeing traditional jewelry created from precious metals with or without gorgeous stones. Then there's art jewelry. Art jewelry, fabricated from a wide variety of different materials, can be about the unexpected, the unusual and the intriguing. Art jewelry promises endless inspiration and creative latitude for contemporary jewelry artists. That's part of what making jewelry from forks is all about.

Being an art jeweler often means taking the time to learn the many skills a metalsmith needs to add to their palette of techniques. While this can be immensely enjoyable and challenging, it is time consuming and can also be expensive. While many fine art jewelers are self taught, many others pay for ongoing classes because well, there's just so much to learn and so many skills to digest....... often before one can get to the point where they're confident in making their own pieces.

Not so with fork jewelry. For an aspiring art jeweler or say, a beader looking to enhance their skills, making necklaces and bracelets (pendants and rings, too) is extremely easy compared to fabricating metal jewelry from scratch. Where many jewelers trying to transition into other skills can be put off or nervous about the annealing (heating) or soldering (using a small torch) required for fabricated jewelry, there isn't any annealing or torch work in making jewelry from utensils. Once you're looking to advance your skills, there's certainly the option of doing that but no heat is necessary to make some pretty creative looking jewelry from forks.

Existing forks in sterling or silver plate are optimal for making jewelry as it's necessary to bend the forks and stainless steel is very hard to bend. These forks are also optimal in that they frequently have detailed embellishments and decorations on the ends of the handles. The art jeweler can easily play off of these gorgeous details, using them to add visual interest to the pieces. If you like shopping, then hunting for unique contemporary or antique forks may only add to your motivation and inspiration for making these rather clever pieces of art jewelry. If you're interest in making fork necklaces and bracelets is piqued, I'd recommend you take a look here on the steps involved.