Thousands of joys of making a handcrafted jewelry

Meet Joy Franklin The artist behind “AThousandJoys” and learn how to make a beautiful Silver Necklace with Red Coral Inlay.

Art has always been her life. She can't live without creating with her hands. Her passion for art started with clay. She graduated with a B.F.A in sculpture in Michigan, and then furthered her studies in New York and Maine. She then decided to study in Italy where she fell in love with jewelry making. She has been living in Italy, the heart of the Renaissance, for the last 7 ½ years. She tries to capture the historical beauty and significance of nature in her intricate work and hopes that it reminds everybody to appreciate the "thousands of joys" that are hidden in nature....

Here are some interesting things Joy shared with me about herself and her highly creative jewelry making process.

 “I make everything myself, from the design to the actual metal. I recycle as much as I can, which means I melt down old silver (I have an old collection of sterling silver frames) in to an ingot, then hand roll it into sheet or pull it into wire. It is very time consuming and hard work (I've already had two back surgeries because of it!) but it's really important to me to keep the impact on the earth to a minimum, and keep my work as traditional as possible".

Here's an explanation on an inlay piece she made using traditional mosaic technique: 

"This very special necklace was meticulously created using the inlay technique or the old tradition of mosaic. 

The sterling silver design is placed on to a piece of sterling silver sheet.

It is then pierced and hand cut in an Indian style design.

It is then soldered to another base made from another piece of silver, which is cut around the outside of the design shape and filed. 

Lastly the bails from which it hangs are soldered into the design. 

For the inlay, a rich warm red Italian coral is broken into tiny pieces and patiently placed into the design fitting each piece in like a puzzle, and glued. 

It is then sanded down and polished. 

These steps may have to be repeated numerous times until all holes are filled in. This is a very slow and arduous process, but makes a very impressive piece of jewelry. 

Last and final step is to polish it to a beautiful shine”.

Many thanks to Joy Franklin for sharing her wonderful art with us.

View more of Joy’s beautiful creations at AThousandJoys