I love dragons (there you go, I said it!) and I've been looking for a dragon necklace for years.
When I decided to start sculpting again, this piece was the obvious choice, and I chose a Chinese dragon to do. After I had started I discovered that the new Chinese Year was the Year of the Dragon (I really hadn't known before!) so completing the piece this year became essential.
I really loved making him, but found it a massive technical challenge to get enough detail on what ended up as a very large piece. I wanted to colour him in, so with tiny emeralds I created his scaly skin, with yellow sapphires for the underbelly.
The eyes were originally going to be black, but I found a matching pair of fiery rubies, and had to use them. Setting them was also interesting, I used a head pin in each one to give him his startling gaze. I then had to add a pearl, so picked the best I have.
I chose one with a slight flaw, just because I thought it added to the piece, and surrounded it in rubies again, to give it flames.
All in all I love this piece, I think it is really a sculpture, and would look amazing with a little black dress...but it is quite impractical to wear! It's not often I say that about my pieces, but with the amount of silver wire and gems he is really very heavy. The detailing on him also creates little traps for the unwary.
Really this piece is an example of what I can do, and I'm really looking forward to creating more pieces in the future.
For more details, see: http://www.jewellerydragon.com/N22072.htm
www.jewellerydragon.com
JewelleryDragon is available at the Harrison Lord Gallery in Brighouse, West Yorkshire.
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I started this piece because I've always wanted a piece of jewellery shaped like a dragon, and I wanted to do something really ambitious, just to see how it would work out. Plus, I also wanted to create a 'jewellery dragon', a symbol for the site.
So I started it a couple of weeks ago, just as I discovered that the 23rd of January is the start of the year of the dragon! Quite a coincidence...
AS you can see from the photos, the dragon is still unfinished. I have used emeralds for the main green of the body as well as green onyx as I wanted to make sure the skin had plenty of tones within it.
The underbelly is yellow sapphires, as are the nostrils (I wanted to use black spinels, but the only size I had was fractionally too large), and I used rubies for the eyes. To set the eyes I used head pins, just so that he had a pair of mad, staring pupils to give him that staring look!
But as I said, he's still unfinished. I need to complete the gem settings, finish doing wire sculpture on his face and feet, fill in the body where there are gaps...but I think you can see enough to see what an amazing dragon he will be!
(And we've called him George http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlVqfC8-UI)
I'm going to set him on quite a thick chain, with a pearl hovering just above him, after all, dragons chase pearls... but most of this is still up for debate, I may go for a medium chain if I decide a thick one is too much. Because of the weight of the piece I can't go for too thin!
I'll post back once he's done!
This is the back....
www.jewellerydragon.com
JewelleryDragon is available at the Harrison Lord Gallery in Brighouse, West Yorkshire.
So why jewellerydragon?
Dragons are famous for having hordes of precious things, jewellery, gold cups, crowns, but DragonHorde didn't quite appeal, it didn't sound playful, in fact it sounded a little Role-Playing to me.
So I came up with JewelleryDragon, a specialist dragon that only wants precious things, and filled my store with that!
www.jewellerydragon.com
