Peggy Brackett Powell River, BC
Peggy uses silver and fused dichroic glass to make colourful and sparkly earrings, necklaces, and studs.
My glass jewelry starts out as large 18 x 18 sheets of opaque, transparent and dichroic glass which I cut, piece and layer to create designs which I fuse (melt) together in an electric kiln at about 1500 degrees F. After the sheet is fused and slow cooled, I re-cut, grind and drill the pieces. All of the drilling and grinding is done under water with special diamond bit tools. Then I return these pieces to the kiln and re-fuse them.
Finally, when the glass pieces have cooled, I construct my jewelry pieces – earrings, pendants, chokers, etc – using these glass creations and select findings of nickel-free sterling silver, stainless steel, niobium, rubber, etc.
I make many of my own findings, e.g pendant bails, necklace extensions, fancy ear wires, etc. I also use commercially available, high quality findings such as basic ear wires. The findings I use are chosen or created to be an element of the overall design of the piece, but are intended mostly to showcase the glass-work. All of the designs are my own.
Dichroic (Die-crow-ik) glass is glass that has a very fine layer (about 3 microns) of metal fused to its surface. Different metals in different combinations create the beautiful colours that you see. I also use glass stringers (‘vermicelli’ shaped/sized glass), glass powders, metal foils and surface manipulation of the dichro etc to augment my designs.
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