One of the most frequent techniques I receive questions for is raising. People are very curious about raised forms, perhaps because they have such dimension and movement.

Customers are fascinated by the shapes and the lightweight but solid feel of the shapes. Fellow jewelry artists light up for another reason – they want to know “HOW?” !

I explain a little to customers, just enough until I begin to see the deer in the headlights look, but my fellow artists like to know it ALL.

So, I thought I’d run through a series of posts outlining how I do it.  I always like to remember (and remind)  that there is more than one way to do things. When I share, it is what works for me, others may do things a little bit differently, or a LOTTA bit differently. That is A-OK. In fact, I think its great and I enjoy hearing how other people go about things.

Here are some raised forms, pieces, and samples.

The two types of raising I’ll talk about over the next few post are synclastic and anticlastic.

Synclastic raising forms the metal in one direction – think bowl.

Anticlastic raising forms the metal in two opposite directions – think saddle or pringle potato chip.

The next post I’ll show the tools I use, stakes, hammers, etc.  and then we’ll look at the actual forming process.