Color, Texture & Casting for Jewelers by Carles Codina

Creating metal jewelry is a hands-on craft. For metalworks, traditional and contemporary techniques are used to alter and create new colors and shapes. Color, Texture and Casting for Jewelers (Carles Codina, 2011, ISBN 9781454700173) provides detailed instruction and beautiful projects using keum boo, mokume gane, microcasting, cuttlebone casting, granulation, and more. All (or even a few) of these in-depth techniques makes this book a lasting resource to metalworks jewelers of all levels.


Codina takes an instructor's approach for Color, Texture, and Casting for Jewelers. The jewelry pieces are created from one of the methods of casting he talks about, and shows the beginnings on how to start the project all the way to the finished piece. Different textures and finishes are shown for different metals, and the section on patinas is great for achieving just about any color you need: light green, bluish green, purple, black, orange-brown, and orange-red.

For freeform pieces, modeling waxes and sandcasting can be helpful and Codina goes into detail with both. I think my favorite technique in the book was mokume gane because the resulting colors and variations in metal grain is so detailed. Again, Codina, goes into tremendous detail and provides all the charts, photos, tools needed to complete a project.

Codina's use of photography as the pieces are worked in various stages of production enables the reader to properly recreate the technique at home.

Book Information:

• Color, Texture and Casting for Jewelers: Hands-On Demonstrations & Practical Applications (Lark Jewelry & Beading) by Carles Codina
• Lark Jewelry, 2011
• ISBN13: 9781454700173
• Softcover, 128 pages
  

Disclosure: This book was provided to the author by the publisher. Any opinions are the author's own.

Renee Shelton.