Newly Listed: Sterling Silver Coral Bracelet

Sterling Silver Coral Bracelet Woven Sterling Silver jewelry with Brass by StaroftheEast
Desert Sunset Photography Print Arizona Cactus Mountains Landscape by WildWildernessPhotos
Bagging The Munro, fine art photography, landscape, highland, nature, mountain, cloud by Neukolor
New York Art Print, Large Wall Art, NYC Photography, Photograph by EyePoetryPhotography

Newly Listed: Caged Seashell Necklace

Caged Seashell Necklace Sterling Silver Kazaziye Handwoven Fine Silver Jewelry by StaroftheEast
wonderment, snow, winter, dreamy, fine art photography by BeverlyLeFevre
Ocean photography, coastal seascape photograph, sunbeams clouds photograph by LupenGrainne
SPIRO, Andalusian Horse , Dapple Grey, Edition Art Print, Wall Decor by SpiritedImage

Newly Listed: Woven Sterling Silver Bracelet

Woven Sterling Silver Bracelet Heringbone style Oxidized Sterling Silver jewelry by StaroftheEast
THE NATURE COLLECTION, macro photography, feather, delicate, bokeh by EmulsionProjekt
Still Waters Lake Photography Grey Blue Home Decor Print Still Waters by VictoriaEnglishCharm
fragile flower skeleton delicate lines fine art photography print nature abstract home decor by Gemfly

Exhibition

As I have mentioned several times before, this Winter we have attended a special silver course. These courses are arranged and paid for by a government under the name of Public Education. The courses are usually attended by women, rarely men, mostly as these courses are often attended by housewives, or retired people, anyway often people who do not have a regular job as the course are at day time. We do not fall in any of the categories, especially NOT the housewife lol :) But we had great fun and learned some special techniques which we will be able to use in our new jewelry pieces.

After 5 months, 3 days a week our course is coming to an end, next week will be our final week, this week however all the different courses had their exhibition to showcase what we all have made in the past months. There was our Silver jewelry pieces, oil paintings, marbled paper art, ceramics, hand painted wooden objects, beaded jewelry, wearable and home textile and embroidery.

Everyone was also welcome to sell their pieces for some extra income, most ladies were pleased with what they earned in the two days, the sale feel like a little reward after all the months of hard work :)

Some of our pieces are already in our shop in the Silver category and many more will be listed, we are planning to explore more of these techniques this Summer.

Silence for a Beautiful Reason

We have been thoroughly neglecting our blog, we are very sorry for our silence! But our silence has some beautiful reasons, well at least the results are beautiful :)
As you may know by now we are going to a special silver course here in town which has been keeping us very busy!

3 days a week is quite a commitment but we enjoy it very much. Beside learning new techniques we also made some lovely friends in our group and we are having lots of fun together. I also finish off work for others as no one else in the group knows how to solder silver, which brigs a lot of extra work, hence our silence again.

I decided to give this set a separate blog post mainly as it is very special and I wanted to give it a nice spot light :)

The teacher tells us that the technique has its origin in the Caucasus, where till World War I, was used to make body armor. You can use a bracelet to pull a car, it is that strong.
Trebizond wire weaving is a local art from the northern Turkish city Trabzon.

Learning something New

As you might know by now we are attending a course here in our town all focused on techniques with silver wire, most are only done in one region in Turkey. One of the techniques is Kazaziye and the result is pretty amazing.

Kazaziye is a local art from the northern Turkish city Trabzon. "Kazaz wire" is used to form a traditional and unique type of Turkish jewelry, the so called "Kazaziye". 

A strand of 24 K gold or 999 K silver having only 0.008 micron thickness (as fine as one strand of human hair) is wrapped over a very thin silk thread with the help of a spinning wheel (no power tools are used). 

Finished Kazaz wire can be 3-5mm thick; it is flexible, yet very strong. The matte finish of the Kazaz wire gives Kazaziye's remarkable pieces a timeless, vintage look. Simply exquisite!

The masters of the art hand-sew Kazaz wire into intricate designs including knotted beads (Turk's Head Knot), herringbone chains, Shemse Motifs (Love Knot), tassels, necklaces, pendants, earrings and rings.The exact history of Kazaz is not well-known, however, it is said that this art was born in Mesopotamia area by Lydians in 2800BC and later spread north to Anatolia. During
the Ottoman Empire, this art was more common, but today it is almost only made in Trabzon.

It is so exciting to learn something new, and is great that we can use what we learned in to our own work. Usually Kazaziye beads are used in specific ways, but we like to use them in a not traditional way to make them our own :)

I've already listed a few of these in our shop, and more are coming, and can't wait to show you more results of our very fruitful course, not to mention that our group is super fun and we have lots of laughs so it is a really nice experience.

Newly Listed: Oxidized Sterling Silver Earrings

Oxidized Sterling Silver Earrings - Kazaziye Handwoven Infinity Jewelry by StaroftheEast
Goldfish, gold printed sheer black tights, S-M, L-XL, Flash Back collection by galstern
Brown and Gold Fine Art Photographic Natural History Print. Natural Home Decor by MilesofLight
Abstract Photography - sparkly lights wall art sparkle print Glimmer by CarolynCochrane

Silver Weaving

We just begun a new, very exciting class: silver weaving.

This kind of work is known as Trabzon (Trebizond) work and is done generally in 22kr gold. We begin with copper wire and than when the time is ripe, will continue with silver wire.

The teacher tells us that the technique has its origin in the Caucasus, where till World War I, was used to make body armor. You can use a bracelet to pull a car, so strong is it.

Here is a very nice YouTube film where the real thing (in gold) is shown. It is in Turkish,  but it is lovely and easy to follow. About six thousand women in Trabzon work in their homes making this kind of weaving or braiding.

The tools couldn't be simpler. A special pair of hand made tweezers, a pin or needle, and a tooth pick.

It is not easy to do, but we feel privileged to have access to such an special art form.

Besides the Trabzon work, we will learn many other types of silver braiding, used to make bezels, chains, and many other things.

All the braiding that you see in this jewelry is hand made.

For this work you use only a small vice and your hands.

The teacher is a lovely and competent woman and it is great fun.

Here you see the beginning of two different types of braids, with six and seven wires.