4/12/2019 - It's now been a few weeks since we hosted Ford Hallam here at Anneville Studio. It was an exciting time full of intense focus, silliness, camaraderie, struggles and victories. And that was just the first day! No seriously, it was a joy and an honour to have Ford and his videographer and goldsmith partner Bella Day here, to guide a new crop of students in the intricacies of traditional Japanese metalworking. From starting with our copper samples to making precision chisels to chiseling and inlay, here is a recap of this amazing experience. 

3/16/2019 - Today's mokume gane twist workshop produced some terrific student work. I'm always amazed at how differently every student approaches this technique. Starting with 6mm square solid mokume-gane rod, students twisted, forged and filed their way to unique finished projects from bracelets to an abstract metal art pieces. Copper/brass mokume was included in the class but two students upgraded to silver/copper/brass mokume. We even had an advanced student doing stamping techniques too while working on two different projects. 

12/21/2018 - As we close out 2018 we want to wish you and your family a very merry Solstice, a merry Christmas, a happy Kwanzaa and a joyous New Year. From England to Japan to a whole new business endeavor, 2018 has been a whirlwind. We hope that the holidays bring you peaceful joy and that you share our excitement for the coming year. From our family to yours, Happy Holidays.

12/18/2018 - December heralded the opening of Anneville Jewelry Lab with our Lab Warming on December 7th and many equipment additions and lab improvements. We installed our state-of-the-art Durabull ventilation system, we got our fancy online registration system up and running with all of our class offerings listed, we put in a stylish new lobby rug, we installed our high-speed wi-fi, and we now have a fabulous glass display case to show off the completed jewelry and metalwork of our members. We also conducted 15 safety orientations, booked 30 hours of user lab time and sold out one of our 2019 classes!

12/13/2018 - Friday January 4th, 5-9pm. We're thrilled to announce that Anneville Jewelry Lab is now officially open! We've been working hard on San Diego's newest jewelry maker co-work space so come by and help us celebrate with music, nibbles & sips and a raffle with all sorts of cool prizes (including free passes!). We'll also be offering exclusive memberships and discounted packages so you can ring in the New Year by making your art a priority. At The Jewelry Lab you'll find a space dedicated to creative focus and stocked with the top notch equipment needed to hone your craft. But Anneville is more than tools, it's a friendly, growing metal arts community. So stop by to have a look and help us celebrate!

12/2/2018 - Friday, December 7th from 5-9pm. A lot has happened since we took this photo! Join us to check out our progress and warm up the new Anneville Jewelry Lab. If you are a metals or jewelry person, you'll want to check out San Diego's newest jewelry/metals teaching and co-work space. Phase One is done and we're celebrating with music, nibbles, tours of the lab and free prizes. Everyone through the door between 5 and 8 gets a raffle ticket to win free lab passes, gift cards and holiday-themed goodies. Drawings will take place at the top of the hour. No purchase necessary but you must be present to win! Directions.

10/1/2018 - As a person who spends much of her life obsessed with mokume gane, it has long been a dream of mine to meet Norio Tamagawa - living treasure of Japan and by far the top mokume gane artist in the world. Mr. Tamagawa taught Hiroko Sato-Pijanowski about mokume back in the 1970's (she subsequently brought her knowledge to art schools across the US). I recently returned from my first visit to Japan, and while there I had the honor of spending a few hours

8/2/2018 - Most jewelry is made with not just one metal, but 2 or more melted together in specific proportions to form an alloy. By adding metals like copper, palladium, zinc, and the like, jewelers (and their refiners) have learned to create a rainbow of metal alloys with a wide variety of strengths, working characteristics, melting points, etc.
For instance, sterling silver is the standard metal for silver jewelry. It is an alloy of elemental copper and silver - 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. The copper increases the strength of the silver, making it stronger and more durable.

4/26/2018 - Uchidashi (loosely translated "hammering down") is a Japanese metalworking technique for creating small 3-dimensional shapes from sheet metal. The technique has been compared to chasing/repousse because of the similarity of the tools used, but really it is quite different. I just returned from England, where I studied this technique with Ford Hallam, a top expert in Japanese metalworking. Here is a visual walk through of my first sample exercise - lots of captions for the detail-oriented.

1/2/2018 - In some ways, 2017 was the year of the chisel for me. Because of a new book project I'm helping Hiroko Sato-Pijanowski with (I'm creating many patterning samples and co-writing one chapter), I've been doing extensive research to find ways to efficiently pattern larger pieces of mokume. It was clear to me chiseling was the way to go, and thankfully the classes I took last March with Ford Hallam helped lead the way. Now, chisel patterning is way more fun and interesting to me than stamp patterning! It is cleaner, more adaptable to different sizes, and it really is faster.

10/26/2017 - Calling all student and pro jewelry/metalsmiths in San Diego - Allcraft is coming! Allcraft is a New York based jewelry supply company headed by Tevel and Sara Herbstmann. If you have never had the pleasure of visiting Allcraft or one of their conference booths before, just know you can't miss it! They've been in business longer than I've been making jewelry; I remember encountering the magical Allcraft booth at my first SNAG 25 years ago.  I spent hours perusing the tiniest elegant needle files, mysterious long-nosed hammers, wooden and plastic forming tools, the most comfortable pliers on the planet, shiny chasing sets, good-quality reasonably priced hand files, flexible sterling cable neck wires; just all manner of specialized jewelry tools. So many hammers .... come see for yourself! Allow at least an hour to browse.

10/13/2017 - I'm hard at work this fall creating mokume gane patterning samples for inclusion in an upcoming book by Hiroko Sato-Pijanowski. Most of the patterning will be done using the traditional Japanese method of carving with a chisel, then flattening. But there will also be room to include some other patterning techniques - these photos show hammering the mokume with a cross pein hammer, and also hammering with steel stamps and wire into the surface. Both are still 'top down' techniques and involve a lot of tedious stock removal (filing), but I'm pretty happy with the results.

9/4/2017 - Recently a ring client asked if I could make a pendant for his fiancée to match the ring he'd ordered for himself. I love making gold jewelry other than rings, but don't generally do it except through commission. I liked how this one came out! Materials are 14k rose gold, 14k palladium white gold and sterling silver. So, just spreading the word out there - any copper/brass/silver jewelry of mine can be ordered in gold instead - just ask! And I had great fun with the photography - the background here is a stack of in-process billets made with silver and various exotic Japanese alloys.

2/28/2017 - I will shortly be taking a week-long class from Ford Hallam, a master of traditional Japanese metalworking. Meet him in this beautifully done short film. In it you watch as he creates a traditional Japanese tsuba, starting with pouring an ingot of shibuichi all the way to carving, inlay and patination. For students of the metals field, it is incredible to see such precision without the use of any power tools. His discussion of why he uses only hand tools is spot-on, and is exactly what I tell my students. Slow down and see! His way of working is an inspiration.

10/7/2016 - Short video showing the steps to fuse and forge down a gold mokume gane billet into material for rings.

3/11/2016 - Last Friday, March 4, we celebrated the release of the Artist Odyssey's new film "Anne Wolf: The Ancient Art of Mokume Gane." We started off with mokume gane demonstrations in the courtyard right next to the film premiere. A pretty good crowd gathered to watch the hammering and torching of metal. I enjoyed answering audience questions that ranged from geeky mokume speak about layer stacks and solid-state vs. liquid state diffusion bonding, to where I buy my materials and what kinds of gold I used.

3/11/2016 - This year has gotten off to a great start - it is low season for wedding rings, which means it is the time of year I get to explore other creative avenues. I'm getting up to speed using my new press to fuse and forge larger mokume billets. This allows me the freedom to use the mokume in the larger format of vessels - something I had been wanting to do for years! I feel I have just scratched the surface with these two new pieces, a goblet and a tray.  There are so many expressive possibilities with mokume patterning; I can't wait to make more.

1/27/2016 - Francesca's first day at Anneville Studio. I’m very excited to introduce my first intern, Francesca Urciuoli. Francesca is a talented jewelry artist from Perugia, Italy who will be assisting me and advancing her jewelry/metals studies here at Anneville for the next few months. Francesca will be helping out with my classes at Anneville Studio and volunteering at WCCPL, sharing with us her unique skills and outlook.
Francesca is fresh from finishing her MFA at the top-ranked metals program at SUNY New Paltz in New York. Before that, she received her BFA in metals from Alchimia in Florence, Italy.

1/25/2016 - Technically there isn't anything you can't do with a direct-drive mill (as opposed to one with reduction) - but reduction gears make life way easier!
Most importantly, reduction gears make it much easier to roll down sheet from one thickness to another, say from 18 gauge to 22 or whatever you like. Mills are designed to do this; really it is their primary purpose. Traditionally you'd melt an ingot, then roll it to the thickness you wanted before you ever got out the jeweler's saw. It is only our 21st century laziness (and convenient online ordering from places like riogrande.com) that have made us order our metal at exactly the thickness we want and relegated the rolling mill to more of a texturing tool.

8/25/2015 - A few weeks back I finally got a chance to work on a mokume gane billet I fused in February - at a Rio Grande workshop with James Binnion and Chris Ploof. I was anxious to see if it held together and if my billet design was a good one. I'm pretty pleased with the result, and am again eager to tool up for fusing precious mokume. That's my fall project for sure. I absolutely love the color contrast possible with the 22k yellow gold layers. The gray layers are 14k palladium white gold, the silver are sterling silver. This bracelet style is one I've been making in copper, silver and shibuichi for some time now - (see one in my Etsy Shop) but this is my first gold one. And for now, this prototype is mine. All mine... :)