Silversmithing in Ubud

In addition to rice fields and spirituality, Ubud is also known as the artistic centre of Bali.  Streets here are lined with the many artisan stores of painters, sculptors, glass blowers, and silversmiths.  We found a silversmith that offered classes and, of course, we just had to take it!  

Choosing a Pattern

We wanted to take the class as a learning experience so when we arrived, we had no clue what to expect or what we wanted to make.  They served us refreshments and gave us some books of jewellery designs to browse through for ideas.  We both decided to make pendants - Jen picked a "Ying Yang Tree" and Dom decided to create his own design by mixing a few ideas from the books.

Cutting the Pattern into Silver

After drawing the actual-sized design on paper, the design it is glued onto a pressed silver plate.  Holes are punched into the areas that will be removed and we used these holes as the starting points for the process of carefully cutting out the design using a super small saw.

Smoothing

After cutting, the next step is to clean up and smooth out the raw edges using a bunch of super small files.

Blow Torching

The next step was to use a foot-powered blow torch to burn off the paper and add a silver loop to the top of the pendant.

 

Polishing

The last step involved using a range of different sand paper grits to gradually grind, smooth out, and polish the pendant.

 

Ta Da!!

They gave us a cord to loop the pendant onto and voila - we got to admire the fruit of our labor!  We were both quite happy with how our designs turned out.  It was a fun day!