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Directed Open Studio
This is an opportunity to work on independent projects with questions and guidance offered by a professional with 40+ years of jewelry and silversmithing experience. Create your own designs for jewelry, flatware, hollowware or sculpture. Get advice and assistance tackling new pieces based on those ideas swirling around in your head. Finish up projects hiding in your bench. Technical demonstrations will respond to participants' interests and needs; Argentium Silver fusing and soldering, fold forming, corrugation with the microfold brake, raising, anticlastic forming, hydraulic press, and kum boo are among the many possibilities. Students who wish to learn use hammers for forming are especially welcome. Students and the instructor discuss and critique designs one-on-one, as well as in a group.
This course is 9 weeks long. There will be no class on February 21. If a make-up is necessary, it will be held on March 28 and/or April 4.
Meet the instructor
Whether using hammers and stakes, or hydraulic press tools, Cynthia's sculptural jewelry and hollowware shows her focus on exploring the fluidity with which metal can be moved, formed, and joined.
Cynthia Eid co-authored the book Creative Metal Forming, with Betty Helen Longhi, published in 2013 by Tim McCreight's Brynmorgen Press. In his foreword for the book, Michael Good says the authors "have succeeded in assembling the first comprehensive textbook on synclastic and anticlastic forming." (More about the book available at www.creativemetalforming.com.)
Cynthia and Betty developed a set of anticlastic stakes, and Eid also works with Knew Concepts and Bonny Doon to help make tools for jewelers and metalsmiths. Lee Marshall has dubbed Cynthia Eid "Godmother of the Knew Concept Saws" since it was her idea for him to produce these saws for jewelers.
Excited about working in sterling silver without the problem of firescale, Cynthia has been working with Argentium Silver since 1999. After meeting Peter Johns (the inventor of Argentium Silver) in 2003, Eid has participated in AS's development. Argentium International, Ltd recognizes her as a Pioneer.
Cynthia Eid's metalwork has won awards for creativity and design, been featured in many publications, and been exhibited internationally. With a BS in Art Education and MFA in Jewelry, Design, and Silversmithing, she has previously worked as a bench jeweler for fine goldsmiths, a model-maker in a gold jewelry factory, and on private commissions. Her work is in museums in the US and UK. Currently an independent metalsmith and educator, she teaches weekly classes at Metalwerx in Massachusetts, and workshops and short courses in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.