Oxed copper, purple glass and copper charm earrings

Gunmetal finish copper earrings featuring a pair of twisted Czech pressed oval glass beads with an iridescent AB coating, which are then dangled with hand crafted copper clay square charms with a dimpled texture.

The dimpled square charms have been hand made from copper clay, impressed with texture, cut and hand formed. One of them has been damaged slightly on one edge by the firing process and I wasn't sure I would therefore use them, but I actually liked the colour left on them with the firescale, which has a variegated colour and iridescent sheen to the surface, which I thought blended well with the coating of the glass beads. So I made them into earrings with double wrapped copper wire, which I've oxidised darkly and buffed to give a matching gunmetal sheen. The quality of the damaged charm has been reflected in the price.

The earrings drop 49mm (1.95") overall from the top of my large classic shaped earwires and hang 15mm (0.6") at their widest in wear.


What is copper clay / precious metal clay?

Copper clay is a clay like medium made from tiny particles of copper (other metals are available too), combined with an organic binder and made into a pliable clay or paste with water. After working with the clay-like medium to form the article, it is thoroughly dried to remove all of the water, the shape is then further refined and then fired at high temperature to both burn off the binders and to cause the copper particles to fuse together as solid metal. Whilst the medium makes it possible to achieve things not possible with other metal forms, it is still quite time-consuming and there are several stages to achieving a nice finish.

Please see this blog post for more on my methods for making such pieces.