From January to May Duko Designs had an intern, Amanda Lye, from Halifax's Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Some things we worked on while Amanda was in the studio included a series of branch and buds, sage leaves and a Japanese maple leaf belt buckle. This included everything from design, fabrication, various mold making techniques, wax injecting and casting multiples. We will soon have a whole new jewellery line with the branch and buds. Here are a few photos of the various process' involved in a few of the pieces we made.
We collected some branches from a storm in January and cast them in jewellers bronze. Then we made designs from the cast branches to include the buckle and hook for the belt buckle and earrings. We fabricated these and then rubber molded the finished designs and had them cast in silver. They were filed, sanded and tumbled along with the sage leaf line. The final step was to patina them to bring out colours such as orange, red and purple.
