Eileen Moylan

Jewellery Designer & Goldsmith Cork

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You are here: Home / Archives for contemporary Irish silver

Sketching with Metal

04.12.2012 by Eileen Moylan //

Copper and Oval Stone ring design

Sketch in Metal not a finished piece

This week I’m working on a commission piece in silver set with a large oval cut emerald. I’m still in the early days of design but I decided to post some early photos of the work so you can see how it changes through the design and making process.

As you will know I love to sketch but sometimes acutally working out the design directly in metal can be more benificial. This is one of those times! The sketches just weren’t giving me a sense of how the form would flow when translated to metal.

So I cut out some copper and using a cheap oval stone I started to play around with the design. Once I have the rough design worked out in metal it’s back to the sketch pad to refine these ideas and work out dimensions.

Here are a few photos of the rough sketches in metal.

Copper and Oval stone ring Design

Sketch in Metal not a finished piece

Copper and Oval stone ring design

Sketch in Metal not a finished piece

Categories // My Workshop Tags // contemporary Irish silver, contemporary jewellery, Silver, silver ring, silversmith, Sketching

Family Crest Brooch

04.03.2012 by Eileen Moylan //

Last week I posted photos of a brooch I made recently. The design brief was that it would incorporate the crests of the two family names. Unlike most family crest jewellery the customer wanted the crests executed in a contemporary design.

This was a really nice job to work on, not only were the crests lovely but the customer was so appreciative of my designs and sketches. The crests were a bird and a fish so I had to figure out how to incorporate these into a fun design.

Click here to see the making process.

I was really happy with the finished product. I decided to mount the crests in a frame design and make them in gold so they would contrast against the silver. I also added some flowers in silver. I had planned to keep it all polished silver but when I experimented with the surface the black oxidized finished worked better. Anyway here’s the finished piece.

Categories // My Workshop Tags // contemporary Irish silver, contemporary jewellery, Eileen Moylan, Jewellery, Jewelry, Silver, silversmith

Is your silver too valuable to scrap?

02.08.2012 by Eileen Moylan //

There was an article in last Sunday’s Irish Independent about  the scrapping of valuable silver items. It was great to see this highlighted in a national paper. I have heard stories of valuable Irish silver works of art being sold for scrap as their true value was never investigated.

While an old scratched  silver spoon might seem only to be worth the weight of silver you might discover you have a collectors item. As all silver has a hallmark it is easy to find out if it is worth considerably more.

Unless ‘Antiques Roadshow’ is in town, checking the value of your silver sounds like a long and complicated process! So here’s a few simple tricks to examine your silverware.

Firstly, Is it silver? Many people over or under estimate the value of their silver. Most commonly they will see a hallmark and assume it’s solid silver. Unfortunatley this isn’t always the case and hallmarks are always better examined with a magnifying glass to read exactly what has been stamped. Some tea sets for example will be stamped with what looks to be a hallmark but on closer inspection will have the letters EPNS. This means that it is not solid silver but Electro Plated Nickel Silver ie. silver plated.

Once you have established that it is silver then look at the hallmark to decipher the country of origin. Here in Ireland it is more likely to have come from either Britain or Ireland. There are a number of assay offices in Britain all with different stamps so if you can make out an emblem like a rose or a lion it is most likely British. I would say before you start buying silver hallmark books the best way to find out what your hallmark means is to Google it! It’s surprising how much information comes up if you put in something as vague as ‘Lion Hallmark’

Then find out who made it. This is the mark that will most likely determine the value of your silver. The more collectible and well known the maker the more money for you! In the hallmark the first mark is the makers mark. The makers mark is made up of the initials of the company or individual. So in my case my makers mark is ‘EM’ for Eileen Moylan.

Again the best way to find out about the maker of your silver is to Google it. Here’s what I found when I put in ‘EM hallmark silver’ I’m just showing a section of the first result. Make sure to look at the shape of the punch so you can match it exactly. You can see from this image that there are a few EM’s differentiated by the shape.

From this you can find the full name of the maker and then search and see what is being written about them, like how much their work is going for.

And once you’ve done all that you can make an informed decision as to whether to scrap your silver or not!

Categories // My Workshop Tags // contemporary Irish silver, Hallmark, Irish Assay Office, Irish Hallmark, Irish Silver, Silver

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