Author: John Huddleston

My client bought an 18 x 14 faceted peridot in Pakistan and wanted a pendant setting for a young lady.  On a stone of that size, the pavilion is significant and requires a domed setting to keep the culet within the mount.

The mount is press formed to get the domed oval shape.  It was then textured and there are six claws to retain the stone securely.  The mount is about 30mm top to bottom.  Weight of the sterling silver in the setting is below the UK regulatory limit for compulsory hallmarking and so, as it was needed quickly, it is not hallmarked.

My client had a wooden bowl to be incorporated into a golden wedding gift by having a stand and a centre engraved boss.  To emphasise the golden wedding the boss would be gold plated.  In a sense, it is an anniversary present that covers 5 years (wood), 25 years (silver) and 50 years (gold).

The base has been formed by sinking a sheet of silver on to a wooden pattern.  The boss is sheet and rod with a thread cut.  The wingnut was cast in delft clay before drilling and tapping.  The boss was engraved by Sam James Ltd and the plating by Elliot-Fitzpatrick Ltd.

I was asked to create some simple jewellery based on a precious family heirloom – a seal ring.  Precious metal clay (PMC)  seemed the ideal medium and I know it has been used by others to record children’s fingerprints amongst many other uses.  So I trialled the idea with silver Fimo ®.

This suggested that PMC would work well and indeed it did! Here are three examples.

The pendants/ charms are about 15mm high and are fully UK hallmarked as 999 fine silver.  The ring is sterling, but is a permitted exemption. The cufflinks are marked as sterling silver because of the cufflink fittings, though the plates are 999. Elliot -Fitzpatrick did the gold plating for me.

 

 

This pendant piece is about the size of a 2p coin – 25mm.  It was more of a challenge than I thought.  I’ve done complex piercing out of designs on silver before – notably my White Horse jewelley, but this is more of a test because it needs to look as regular as possible.  There are thirteen separate voids to deal with. Anyway, I’m content.  In life you don’t see the minor deviations that show in an enlarged photo. Commercially, I think they would be cast or stamped to get full symmetry.

I’ve bean busy making a pendant for a client to replace something she lost and misses.  She made the shape out of air clay for me and I then cast several beans from it.

This is shows the bean model and a solid casting.

The castings I made are

My client has the one with the chain and the middle one is available from my shop.  The solid bean is the same piece as the image above that shows where the hallmarks are.

A rose quartz and a turquoise cabachon mounted in silver rings made during a recent workshop teaching session.

The rings are sterling silver with a fine silver bezel.

These bracelets were to reuse parts of some repurposed forks that weren’t really what the owner wanted.  I liaised with the London Assay Office in advance to confirm that hallmarking would be acceptable.  Each bracelet has  six display marks – the five traditional marks and the Charles III Coronation mark.

This is the first whistle I’ve made.  It’s about 4cm long.  This one has a plastic insert to make it whistle.  Future ones are all silver.  It has the full UK Hallmarks for the London assay office and the Coronation Mark for Charles III.

As a gift for someone of a certain age with a birthday in August, I was asked modify my style of bracelet that was inspired by a visit to Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall. Peridot is the birthstone for August.

Five of the same sized peridot look unbalanced, but this solution, though trickier to do looks good. The centre peridot is fixed on one side only to allow the bracelet to expand.

My client had a number of large gems of sentimental value.  I was asked to mount one as a ring and the other as a tie clip.  It took me ages to come up with suitable designs because the stones are nearly as deep as they are wide.  A Nordic influence in the designs was desirable.

Eventually this was agreed for the ring – the bezel being based on a Nordic beast pendant.

For the tie clip, a dragon was the theme.  ( I had Smaug in my mind).  I had to minimise sharp edges and again the design has to cope with the depth of the stone.

9ct gold gives a little interest to the flames.  There’s a clip underneath and, because of the weight, I provided a safety clip.

I’ve been practicing more with fold forming and this is a fairly simple double sided fold in copper.  Rather than bright polish it, I decided to add a patina.  After experimenting with solutions to produce a blue coloration, I achieved this result simply by localised heating with an oxy/gas torch and a very fine tip.  The finish is then protected with a couple of coats of clear acrylic lacquer.  The pin is stainless steel hard soldered on to the back.

It’s not easy to see – it wasn’t easy to photograph, but the main rings – four pairs and the centre one – have different patterns.  The chain weighs about 60g.  It’s hallmarked on the rear of the largest ring.

It was a pleasure to do this task.  Many years ago, one of my students, when I taught a silversmithing evening class, made a beautiful silver butterfly assembled from parts cut from sheet.  Another student made one too.  After complaints from one of his children, he started to make another, but alas never finished it.  I was asked to complete the project.

It is actually built from sixteen pieces, but I have welded some of the parts together to make it easier to assemble and disaaemble for cleaning.

It weighs about 27 grams and stands about 4-5cm high.  Cutting out the pieces takes ages and requires concentration, but is curiously relaxing as you can’t think about anything else!

This is one of my annual ingots for 2024. This has six marks, i.e. all the traditional marks plus the King Charles III Coronation mark.  It’s a bigger and therefore heavier ingot to allow space for the extra mark.  Each of my annual ingots is slightly different in some way, so the edges of this one taper so the back is larger than the front, rather like the segment one.

I shall do another at some point without the Coronation mark.

This one’s mine!  If you are interested in an ingot/ cufflinks/ etc. for 2024 with or without the Coronation mark, please contact me.  I have a small selection of ingots from previous years  available in my shop.

A 30th wedding anniversary is identified with pearl.  Here is a development of a previous necklace that includes pearls to make it an appropriate gift.

The bar next to the clasp is just to provide a surface for the assay marks.

 

I don’t know why I was asked to mount this sunstone in a pendant that was tomato shaped, but I was, so I did!   The sunstone is a sphere about 10mm across and freely rotates in the cage, which has similar hoops on the rear.

A basic ring to show off this heart shaped zultanite stone.  The stone shows amazingly different colours according to the type and direction of the light.

If you want to use your favourite pencil down to the minimum, you need a silver pencil extender and why not a holder for your eraser too.

This extender is for 7mm pencils and , of course, you need a pusher rod for the eraser holder to push the stub out.  All fully UK hallmarked including the Coronation Mark.  My thanks to my client for permission to use the right hand image.  I’ve made more stationery items.

These cufflinks are lightly etched images derived from a photgraph of the Memorial Arch at Radley College, near Oxford in the UK.  It’s not obvious, but one is a negative of the other i.e. the arch is raised on one pair and sunken on the other.  They are available as ‘one-offs’ in my shop.

This dish is just under 10cm square and is made by a technique called fold or crease forming.  I asked the London Assay Office to stamp the hallmarks in a circle as a feature of the dish.  Here they are in close up.

Clockwise from the top we have

• My sponsor’s mark
• Traditional sterling silver mark
• Fineness mark for sterling silver
• Mark of the London Assay Office
• Date letter mark for 2023
• Optional mark for the Coronation of King Charles III

 

 

This is a styilised representation of a silver anchor.  It is solid silver, about 35mm high and weighs 9g.  It has the full UK hallmarks including the King Charles III coronation mark. (For London not Birmingham.)

It is available for sale in my shop,

Ammolite is a beautiful gemstone.  My client supplied these pieces and they seemed to me to need a secure, but minimal setting to focus attention on the stones themselves.

The pendant piece is double sided and this setting allows both sides to be on display.  It is fairly symmetrical and relies on the shape of the stone to keep it secure.  The brooch piece is one sided, so there is a silver plate with the brooch pin and revolver safety catch.  The stones could be removed from the mounts without damage if required.

A special request for a daughter’s PhD graduation .  This pendant is small – about the size of a 20p coin.  It’s fully hallmarked on the rear.  I’ve several pieces inspired by  biochemistry including a pendant inspired by DNA histone proteins and several DNA helix inspired items.

The cap is about 25mm square. A grandmother’s gift on graduation.

And here it is as worn on graduation day.

It was much admired!

 

In 2021, the members of the Abingdon Silver Group decided they wanted a mark that could be applied to work done whilst at the Group.  One was duly designed and commissioned.  We decided to lodge impressions of the mark with the Abingdon County Hall Museum and I created, with a little help from my friends, this mounted plaque.

It was somewhat stressful applying the stamps after all the other work was done, but the impressions are clean, if not completely straight.  My hallmark and the full set of assay marks for 2022 including the Platinum Jubilee mark are at the bottom.  It’s about 40mm square. It was presented to the Museum in April 2023.  There’s more detail about the plaque here.

This design is not unlike one I’ve been making for many years.  That one is in my shop.  This one is two millimeters thick and has more pointed style that approaches what the mathematicians call an ‘astroid’.

Not the best of pictures, but it shows a pair of chain cufflinks with the traditional marks on the front plate and the Coronation mark on the rear plate.  In order to keep the King’s head upright, the cufflinks are handed.  These join a pair of similar cufflinks with the Platinum Jubilee mark instead of the Coronation mark.

Customer supplied fossils  – set as requested.

I’ve made diamond shaped pendants before, but I was asked to make one this year with the coronation mark included.  To give room for this, the pendant has to be significantly larger and weighing twice as much.

A variation on my popular copper/ silver twist bracelet – I was asked to make it wider.  In discussion on the design, we decided to have two parallel bracelets with a silver plaque for the initials of the recipient.  The bracelets are also connected by a bar at each end to keep the strands together. A more challenging task, but justified by the result.

One of the pair got lost, but I couldn’t think how I had made them – I don’t keep construction details.

I started from scratch and made these. The rings swing independently.

These are the same in concept as the previous pair, but the back ring has a different texture and they are slightly larger.  More ‘statement’ than previously.  I make larger, thicker versions for a pendant.  These are thin to keep them light.

Fascinated by the idea of walking stick cabbages or Jersey kale, I bought some seed and successfully grew a couple of stems.  (They attracted cabbage white butterflies and their caterpillers like a magnet!). After carefully drying the stems, with my workshop smelling of cabbage for weeks, the stems are remarkable light and strong.

I’ve now varnished the stems and made a silver cap and foot cover, so a project of over two years is now complete. The foot is not a silver ferrule as there would be no grip.  This way the rubber foot can be replaced easily and the stick is more practical.  The silverware has full UK hallmarks including the Coronation mark. This one is mine, but I have a second stem if anyone is interested in commissioning me!

To celebrate the arrival of their third child, I was commissioned to make a birthing ring.  This made from 9ct red, white and yellow gold wires.  Making a virtually invisible join is tricky to get the continuity.  At the back, you can just see my mark, the normal marks and the Coronation mark.

Every year from 1979 onwards, I’ve made an ingot and each one is different.  This is 2023 – ‘Y’.  Just one letter to go in the current cycle then in 2025, we start again.  There’s more detail here.

Here it is very much magnified and straining the autofocus on my camera.

I’m just wondering, as Charles III is being crowned this year, will there be an extra mark?  History suggests there might be, but I’ve not heard yet.

Those of you familiar with East German traffic lights will recognise this little feela.  He’s only about 25mm tall intended as a silver necklet.

The crab motif is domed which gives a three dimensional effect.  Other star signs are available.

The earrings were no longer required, but the malchite cabochons were attractive and had sentimental value.  One earring was easily converted to a pendant using the original bezel.

The other has been made into a cabochon ring with a textured shank

You can see the mark of the Platinum Jubilee of the late Queen Elizabeth II at the end of the hallmarks.

My client for this cross wanted a distressed surface on the outer face of the cross.  Also that there was no visible loop for the chain from the front.  The front face is bright polished, but the sides have a satin finish. The hallmarks are discretely placed on the side.  The cross is 60 x 40mm.