Book Reviews: Drawing Jewels for Fashion and Introduction to Precious Metals

My time at Penland brought me back to 'metals' reality, in that just as much as I need to work in the studio, I also need to study the properties of working with metal and sketching/designing a look.

I purchased both of these books to give me examples and lessons in understanding the finer details of fully sketching a design as well as understanding the intricate properties of how metals react to each other and the work we put them through. 

Drawing Jewels for Fashion is a beautifully made book, the sketches are precise and provide a glimpse into the designers of major fashion houses and jewelry companies and where these designers find inspiration, their design process and influence.  The binding of the book is unique too, not glossy or with a print cover that comes undone but a pressed book that feels handmade. 

Some of my favorite designers are featured, such as Solange Azagury-Patridge, Stephen Webster and several others.  I was impressed that most of the designers featured had backgrounds in GIA certification and actually made the prototypes or designed the initial pieces in wax.  

I highly recommend Drawing Jewels for Fashion for anyone that is building a jewelry library collection. 

This book can be purchase on Amazon.

Jana Brevick had Introduction to Precious Metals during our session at Penland, and she drew upon the charts and information from this book quite a bit.  Mark Grimwade is a veteran in the metalsmithing field and is constantly called upon by the Santa Fe Symposium to host workshops and demos on using precious metals.  You can tell by his thorough and indepth knowledge of metals by his detailed graphs, photos and chemistry references that Mark is an expert in the field.

I'm just into the first chapter of the book but I'll say that it is a good read, not too 'sciencey' and very, very necessary for anyone working with metals in general, doesn't even need to be just gold or silver.  It's unfortunate that my program at ECU we aren't required to read books covering metals or manipulation of materials.

This is another highly recommended book and reference tool in the studio.

Also on Amazon.

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