As I mentioned last week Judy, our ED, is developing her jewelry making skills through a series of classes with local artist Donna Harris. So far she has had two of eight sessions for her silversmithing class. When I asked her to explain her progress after the first session she showed me the piece in the image below.

Since I am not familiar with silversmithing, when she described making a bezel (the sterling collar around the stone) and soldering the bezel to the back plate, I wasn’t really sure what that entailed. I thought I might try to find a visual for this description and stumbled upon a five-part video series by ArtJewelry Magazine posted to You Tube. In this second part you can watch the soldering of the bezel before it is fastened to the back plate.

In Judy’s setting in progress the stone has been placed in the bezel. The white string coming off of both sides is actually dental floss. The dental floss isn’t permanent of course, but is used so the stone can be easily removed during other stages of work or if it doesn’t fit quite right in the setting. (And it makes it minty fresh!)