Join us on a fascinating visit to the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England lead by our own Anne Wolf! We’ll see how production jewelry was manufactured in the hey day of Birmingham’s Jewelry Quarter. In the early 1900's the Quarter employed over 30,000 people who used fly presses, belt-driven polishers and blow-torches (why do Brits call torches ‘blow-torches?’-  watch this and you’ll never forget!). Next we'll take a virtual visit to Sculpt Nouveau with Steel & Gold Artist Bette Barnett and she'll show us how to select and buy finishes, along with some tips for purchasing patinas on their tricky website. Read more for photos, links and resources.

Over the second week of June, Anne taught her first online class at Anneville Jewelry Lab to an enthusiastic group of 10 students ranging from San Diego to Georgia all the way to Edmonton, Canada. Blazing ahead through the vagaries of technology, Anne guided the students through the creation of a stunning mokume gane bracelet, and the resulting student works were fantastic! Along with the learning we also had a lot of fun seeing each other's home studios and tools. San Diego local Miranda created a gorgeous bracelet using her very basic but ingenious kitchen table set up of masking tape & ballpeen hammer stake proving that you don't need a ton of tools to make cool stuff. Speaking of tools though, check out Mary's uber-cool mandrel! We also got a kick out of guest appearances by Laurie's dog Rusty (great name for a metalsmith's dog-LOL!), Jasper the very fabulous cockatiel and various cats - who unequivocally let us know exactly what they thought of the whole thing. Read on for more photos and Anne's thoughts on the class.