I’m a sucker for innovative materials in jewelry design. Currently, one obsession I haven’t been able to ignore is my fixation on plastic. Coming from someone who works normally with fine metal and gemstones, that might come as a surprise. I think I’m drawn to the fluidity and warmth of plastic. I also like the translucent quality. Of course there is plastic and there is plastic! I’m not talking the cheap dime store earrings that look like shower curtain rings, but pieces along the lines of these “Forbidden Fruit” pins.
Two designers doing wonderful things today with Lucite and acrylic are Alexis Bittar and Karen McCreary, respectively. I’d like to join them in creating masterpieces using plastic, but for now I’m still very much in the experimentation phase. Here, though, is a design I did around an acrylic disc with 24K gold leaf and silver:
Tomorrow I’ll be posting another design inspired by plastic and I’ll address the differences in the various types of plastic from Bakelite to acrylic, resin and Lucite.
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