InTouch Magazine Articles Archive

Issue 18, May 2008

Jewellery making

By Janet Wright.

I’m not very creative, well not in an artistic way, but having been to the Bead Workshop in Pyla to report on Tricia Churchs’ wonderful “cottage industry” and seeing her many varied styles of work in the art of jewellery making, I was fascinated and decided to give it a try along with my friend, also a complete novice.

On our first visit Tricia took us all round the workshop explaining a myriad of different styles of jewellery we would be able to make in every colour and type of beads, semi-precious stones and fossils you could imagine. She then sat us down at her dining room table with tiny beads and “posts” (like pins only bigger), and taught us how to thread the beads onto the posts and then form a loop to join one bead to another, thus making a necklace, bracelet or earrings. In other words the first and very basic mechanics of jewellery making. It wasn’t easy! I sometimes still struggle to make a suitable loop! Special tools are needed, rather like pliers, some with rounded prongs, some are flat for gripping and others for cutting chains etc

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