What’s In A Name?

Why Solunar Silver Studio?

I love working with pure silver… It always seems like some kind of magic – the beautiful simplicity of the way the metal handles and how a length of wire can, over a period of time, transform into a beautiful piece of jewellery.

Even more magical is the transformation of the product Precious Metal Clay (or PMC) which I use to make pure silver charms and other more solid items of jewellery. PMC is composed of micro-fine particles of pure silver bound together with an organic clay-like binder. It looks like clay and feels like clay…until it is put into a red-hot kiln, which burns off the binder and fuses the particles of silver together into a solid shape of pure silver.

The mediaeval alchemists would have loved it!! Turning a piece of clay into pure silver with just the application of heat!! There is also a 24 karat gold version of PMC, so this would have really thrilled them – Clay into pure gold!!!

So this was my inspiration for the name….Sol was the alchemist’s name for gold and Luna was their name for silver. Their writings which detailed their ‘chemical’ experiments used symbols to represent these elements. Unsurprisingly, gold – sol – was represented by a sun symbol and silver – luna – was represented by a moon symbol.

One day I may venture into working with gold….. but for the moment I am happy working with silver.

As for ‘studio’ – well, first and foremost I consider myself an artist. I have worked in both 2D and 3D using all kinds of media over the years and so the environment I am most used to working in is a ‘studio’.

So that’s it…SOLUNAR SILVER STUDIO!!