jewelry settings

Review by hb : Great for inspiration, thin on detail

This book takes the reader through a basic overview of LOTS of jewelry materials, including lots of non-traditional things you may not think of in terms of jewelry -- aluminum and steel, plastics, leather, feathers & hair, paper, rubber & silicone, cement & ceramics -- and has some lovely photos to show you why you might want to expand your thinking to include these. It also does a good job of giving the most basic considerations of using each material -- what its strengths and limitations are when considering it for use in jewelry -- and what techniques can be used to shape / use each material in jewelry applications. It is great for inspiration, and will help you look beyond traditional materials and point you to techniques to use with them. Where it falls short is in details -- if you wanted to LEARN these techniques, this isn't the book. If you were curious about how a particular type of stone setting is achieved, the book's quarter-page basic description will tell you; if you want to learn to do it, it will at least give you the concept and terminology to find a better resource. The simple basic descriptions of techniques also make many processes sound easy -- simple is not necessarily easy -- and skips over quite a few basic safety precautions (yes, mother-of-pearl and shell ARE pretty easy to cut, anyone with a Dremel can run right down to the basement and do it -- but the dust of all shells is at least a severe lung irritant and many are TOXIC!!). And I don't even want to think about the the trouble you could get into with the acids and solutions in there, with basically no more advice than add acid to water and use ventilation! [It also began to annoy the heck out of me that dimensions of things were given in fractional inches, with millimeters in parentheses following, when it was obviously written in mm and some editor went through and converted and rounded (I mean, 1/64th inch is variously "converted" to 0.4mm, 0.5mm, 0.6mm -- sometimes on the same page! a 50% difference isn't significant??) Hey, jewelers work in mm even in the USA, and while I can understand that using gauge numbers (the way most of us buy and think of metal goods) can be problematic as there are different scales, trying to acquire sheet metal 1/64 of an inch thick (approximately!) is tougher than trying to convert mm to whatever unit is being sold.] So -- VERY good for inspiration and expanding your thinking, pretty good for helping you determine if a material would be suitable for use in a particular way, not sufficient to help you actually do most of it. For a beginner, go for it, it'll give you lots of things to think about but the book expects some familiarity with lots of jewelry tools and techniques, so some parts may be beyond you for now -- but much of it will be helpful. For an experienced jeweler, go for it, it'll give you lots of things to think about and and is a really good way to break out of a creative box. Just be aware that this is a "choosing" book, not a "teaching" book (as it says in the title, after all). Look at Amazon's "Look Inside" pages to see the format and the type of info given and not given, and you will likely be very happy with your purchase. I would have given it four stars, but for the safety concerns.

Review by jokat : excellent reference resource

This is a 5star in my opinion because it is unique and apart from the masses of jewellery making subject books out there. This book does not have projects or techniques as such - it actually focuses on material choices and whats available to use in jewellery and how. It covers a lot of materials, like no other book, and gives a brief description of how each material can be used and with what etc.. Its very very useful in helping to choose a medium to combine, say with silver or gold, as inspiration for adding unusual materials to your work and what you would need to do so. The contents are; Base metals. precious metals. natural materials; wood, bone, ivory, horn, shell and jet, leather, feathers hair and quills. Plastics and rubber. other media. stones and settings. Basically its a fantastic book this is.(Its also spiral bound and stays open on the bench) It has some recipies at the back for etching, colouring metals and a handy size chart for USA sizes and UK sizes. All in all I wouldn't be without it now. I find more use for it every time I refer to it and there is much more that I cannot fit in a review. Very very useful.

Review by whim : Great reference!

I love how this book has so many techniques used in metalsmithing with a photograph of each technique so you can quickly glance at various outcomes. It contains instructions on how to achieve the technique, but doesn't delve into a lot of detail, but that's okay... it gives enough instruction to try out a new technique, and if you want to pursue it further you would have to go to other sources. The book not only covers metals, but other mediums as well (gemstones, leather, bone, wood, glass and others). This book would make a great addition to a jewelry makers book collection.