I met Trang a couple of years ago at The Circle, a Tattoo shop in London Soho.
She is a kind & incredibly talented tattooer, going by Capital T on social media.
When she mentioned making her artwork into jewellery, I looked forward to discussing it further. I love carving a face, and her characters are so stylish and beautiful.
When we met up, T showed me her sketch (see below) and we chatted about scale, design options, timescale and cost. It was decided that we would make 22 numbered pendants of her Pierrot design. T wanted a striking design, so we chose to make it 6cm in height.
With design and scale decided, I began by transferring the drawing onto wax.
And so begins the carving process. For this particular design, I carved the frame and the face separately. It just made everything easier to get to. If I'm honest it's a process of loving it one minute, and it looking questionable the next! But when you keep going, the design magically appears. Once I was happy, as well as T, I took the wax to my local North London casters.
A master was made in silver. I collected it, cleaned it up and had the back engraved with Capital T's logo. I then took it back to the casters to have a mold made; from which 22 pendants were cast. I also created a custom bale with an Elfin logo on it, & had 22 of those made aswell.
I did underestimate how much work it would be to clean up, add bales, hand number and polish each pendant. It took 5 solid days of solid polishing. But was it satisfying? Yes.
Bear in mind, it had taken weeks to get to this point. You try to picture what it's going to look like in polished silver, but it's difficult to imagine when it's in that dark green wax.
And then when it came to life, I was really pleased.
And so was T (whom I kept updated with progress photos).
It was November time, and I decided to take the Pierrot Pendants and meet T in Warsaw.
It's her hometown and stayed for a few days to unwind after a massive output of work.
What a lovely time I had. We went to a surrealist exhibition, out for some tasty food and I was chuffed to bits that T had time to give me a tattoo as well. All in all, such a pleasure to work with Trang. Massive thanks for the commission, the trust required to recreate your work, and the friendship that resulted. She's amazing go check her out here
Most importantly, to purchase a Pierrot Pendant from Trang go HERE
There are only a few left!
And if you're still here reading, thank you so much :) I appreciate you.
To see the processes in more detail check out the videos below>>>>>> parts 1, 2 & 3
Part : Wax Carving
Part 2 : Polishing
Part 3 : Warsaw
If you'd like to commission something, get in touch :)
Isabel
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