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What's New on our Web Site We've really exploded on the Web! Our site recently won a Magellan 3-star rating based on content, ease of navigation, and appeal. Pages added on the site since the last issue of American Silversmith include: Free advertising in the International Silversmiths' Tool Exchange for buying and selling. The Web's most comprehensive National Silversmithing & Related Workshops page is a great resource to tune up your skills and learn the basics. Learn proper Slide & Photograph Labeling and find obscure suppliers on our Hard-to-Find Goods & Services page. The Library, containing many reviews, will help you choose the right book on silver. Also, the Late-Breaking News page gives you up-to-the-minute announcements on SAS-related activities. The ShopTalk page is full of valuable technical information, including The World of 3M Abrasives, How to Keep Tools From Rusting, Finishing Issues & Safety, Firescale Issues, Wood-Grained Metal: Mokume-Gane, Precious Metal Clay, and Small-Scale Doublée Making Procedures. We are always looking for interesting articles for this page for which you will receive full credit with your name, address, phone number, and E-mail address. Finally, "clicking" Other Sites of Interest will bring you to a section containing informative Web sites on copyright laws, safety, and other metal-related sites. If you have suggestions as to how our site can be improved or additional topics added, please let us know. Make sure to check this constantly updated site often and feel free to E-mail us with any questions once you're there—it's cheaper than a phone call and faster than sending a letter. Supplier News NEW BENEFIT: Bob Mitchell Productions has released the 1995 Metal Arts Source Book on CD-ROM, a resource guide to the work and resumés of more than 300 contemporary metal artists. The Source Book contains more than 1400 images including jewelry, holloware, objects, enamels, precious and non-precious metals, and other materials from American, Canadian, and Australian artists. It includes an article examining the exotic new material precious metal clay (covered on our Web site's ShopTalk page) written by Tim McCreight and Patricia Daunis Dunning. The Directory sections provide the names and addresses of nearly 500 craft galleries, nearly 150 suppliers of tools and materials, plus over 650 schools which offer jewelry/metals programs in the USA and abroad. The Source Book comes complete with its own installation programs and instructions, and runs on both the IBM and MAC format. The 1995 Metal Arts Source Book on CD-ROM is the first complete electronic guide to contemporary metal art. It enables the reader to view the art work with an easy movement between images and resumés, magnify any images by more than 400% for detail, and search the entire Source Book for all occurrences of key words of the reader's choosing. All pages in the Source Book may be printed to either black-and-white or color printers. Bob Mitchell Productions was founded in 1995 by Bob Mitchell to create and produce electronic resources for the fine arts. Mitchell received a BFA and MFA in ceramics with additional studies in metalsmithing. He taught in the university system from 1966 until 1980, when he established his own computer consulting business. Mitchell's information management skills and visual sensitivity combined to produce this first electronic source book for the metal arts. The 1995 Metal Arts Source Book on CD-ROM is available for $51 (includes USA shipping and handling), or $45 for SAS Members (includes USA shipping and handling), from Bob Mitchell Productions, 5009 Londonderry Drive, Tampa, Florida 33647, 813/977-0124, Fax: 813/977-8462, E-mail: rmitchel@cftnet.com, VISA/MC accepted. Artisan Happenings Boris Bally had a one-man show entitled: Constructed Metal Objects at the Joanne Rapp Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, April 1-30. Boris also participated in the group show: Treasured Trash: Art From Recycled Materials, in which he created bowls out of scrapped traffic and street signs. Bernard Bernstein's first piece of holloware was purchased in May by the American Craft Museum in New York City. The coffee pot was made when Bernard was a graduate student in 1959 at Rochester Institute of Technology's School for American Craftsmen, under the professorship of the late Hans Christensen. Susan Ewing was in residence at the University of Applied Art in Prague, Czechoslovakia, from May 14 through June 18, hosted by sculptor Vratislav Karel Novák. Sponsored jointly by the Ohio Arts Council and Soros Center for Contemporary Art, an artists' cultural exchange program selected four Ohio artists working in various media to travel to Prague, and likewise, four Czech artists were selected to come to the U.S. during 1995–1996. Aggressive Solutions: Contemporary Works in Metal by Susan Ewing 1980–1995, will continue to travel through 1997. The exhibition will be at the Arkansas Arts Center Museum for Decorative Arts from August 14–September 22, followed by at least three more sites in the U.S. and Europe. The exhibition catalog, with essays by Elizabeth Scheurer, Robert Benson, and Alberto Alessi, is available through Interalia/Design Books, PO Box 404, Oxford, Ohio 45056, Tel: 513/523-6880, Fax: 513/523-1553, or the Ohio Craft Museum, 1665 West Fifth Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43212 for $16.95 plus $3 shipping & handling. Did someone say fish? This whale of a fish platter (pictured right) was designed and created by SAS Artisan William Frederick for one of his favorite collectors. Completed in June, it measures 28" long x 14" wide x 7" high, with a weight of 262.5 troy ounces! The handle is 8" long and is solid sterling, sitting atop the collector's monogram—JML. It took approximately 1,000 hours to raise and fabricate this piece.
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Great Silversmith Dies Solve Hallqvist of Cleveland, Ohio, died at the age of 77 on April 21, 1996, after a brief illness. Solve, an Artisan member of SAS, was well known in the Cleveland area and taught silversmithing for 16 years at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Born April 4, 1919, in Sweden, he apprenticed in 1942 with C.F. Carlman, Stockholm's Court Jeweler, and furthered his education from 1943-1950 with Baron Eric Von Flemming, Stockholm's Court Silversmith. His professional activities included: 1948, silversmith for Bone Bakker & Zoon, Amsterdam, Holland, and Jan & Leo Brom's Edelsmitse, Utrecht, Holland; 1951, experimental silverwork for Steuben Crystal, New York City; 1952, silversmith for Henry Hopkins, Baltimore, Maryland; 1952-1984, silversmith for Potter & Mellon, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio; 1960-1961, partner & silversmith with Stacey-Hallqvist, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and from 1984 to his death, Solve maintained a home studio in Cleveland, Ohio, specializing in totally handwrought sterling holloware, flatware, and jewelry. He also participated in numerous exhibitions since 1957. I visited Solve for the first time last year, and found him to be as unassuming, gracious, and soft-spoken in person as he was on the phone. He was truly a gifted silversmith, preferring to hand carve blocks of sterling instead of casting, and hand raising in place of spinning. His work was so highly regarded that he continued to produce pieces for loyal patrons in Sweden. Though he rarely promoted himself and was not widely known, he should be remembered as an American treasure. Welcome to our New Artisans Dorothy Gordon of Washington, DC, Richard Mawdsley of Carterville, Illinois, Cynthia Schlemlein of Bothell, Washington, Munya Avigail Upin of Belmont, Massachusetts. It's always interesting jurying incoming slides from silversmiths wanting to join SAS as Artisan members. When rejection letters are sent out, they are personalized with helpful criticism on how the individual's work can be improved. This process can be very nerve-racking for the jury, for many smiths are very close to the technical perfection we look for. Once a silversmith is juried into SAS, that person can participate in all Society exhibitions and the referral service. This is the guarantee that the public will always receive the very highest quality craftsmanship possible. |
