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Your Top 3 Jewelry Making BooksBeading books and those about metalsmithing scrutinized to save you time. Choose the best beading books for your projects. Select from the top jewelry making titles and leading authors. This Book Report section is dedicated to jewelers seeking for a learning reference, for technical books. I’ll refer to inspiring books later too but all will have a pedagogical air to them.
Here’s my Suggestion for Your Top 3 Jewelry Making Books
For jewelry making books with step-by-step projects
go here.
McCreight, Tim; (2004); “Complete Metalsmith”; Brynmorgen Press, Inc. Portland, Maine, USA. ISBN: 1-929565-05-4 Tim McCreight is a renowned metalsmith with over 35 years of experience. He has taught workshops nationally and internationally and is an expert in PMC certification. He started working in jewelry making in 1970 and has since published a number of books. The Complete Metalsmith is his most famous editorial project. His 35 years experience being a jewelry maker are distilled for you in his Complete Metalsmith book.
All three books contain the knowledge and experience of Tim’s 30+ years in the art of metalsmithing. The books are designed to be used as another bench tool, a reference book for instruction. My Complete Metalsmith is in arms reach, I just grab it from the bookshelf that’s on my left when sitting at the bench. Complete Metalsmith has general and specific information about practical themes of interest for jeweler’s, such as materials, tools, shaping, surfaces, joining, color, finishing, casting, stones and stonesetting, chains and clasps and finally findings and mechanisms. But what I like most about this book is that it delivers the type of information you only get when you attend a course or workshop. And that’s hands-on information, the tips and tricks you learn when actually doing something, the solutions or by-passes when you have a problem, the secrets to making a task easier to do. That sort of marvelous information you take with you after some hours of class or when you learn jewelry making with a mentor right beside you. The type of quality info you get from this site too! Tim very generously has put all that into text, adding complexity issues in the Professional and ProPlus edition. This is a must-have for bench jewelers.
Untracht, Oppi; (1996); “Jewelry Concepts and Technology”; Robert Hale Limited; London. ISBN: 0-7091-9616-4 I absolutely love this book. For me it’s the most precious jewelry making book I own. It’s worth the somewhat high price. It took Oppi 10 years for making this book, and I think he did a tremendous job. He was recipient of the SNAG Honorary Member Award which recognizes people who have made important contributions to the fields of jewelry and metalsmithing.
The book goes into incredible detail about the nature of metals and metallurgy, what happens technically speaking when you heat metal, when you form it, when you cast it, etc. It is a book for deeply understanding the mechanics and the chemical-physical changes and reactions that take place when you’re on the bench. It explains the little miracles you do in a technical language. It also includes many references to ethnical and antique jewelry techniques and designs, a fantastic reference to learn how, when and why this craft is where it is to this day. It explains every single technique in detail (it only contains black and white pictures though – it’s purpose is not meant to be a step-by-step book) and has excellent resources for you at the end of the book. I particularly liked two diagrams created by the author, one is The Jewel Mandala and the second is called A Polarized Convocation of Jewelers. The first diagram (pg. 9) is, literally, about “mapping the jewel-motivation cosmos”. It explains graphically the relationships between the jewel and the collector / wearer / investor, and how these in turn relate to a root image, a self image and a public image and all that this implies. The second diagram (pg. 12) is about the jeweler as an artist. It analyses your role as the creator, generator and conceiver of all the “concepts poured into the jewel object”. It explains the connections between the designer (mass-market production, contemporary-commercial or limited-series-art production) with being an anonymous jeweler, an independent jeweler or teacher jeweler and their means to creation (intuitive, technique specialist or intellectual-conceptual) and their relationship with the rest of the chain of jewelry making. It is definitely my favorite book...
Bonewitz, Ronald Louis; (2005); “Rock and Gem: the definitive guide to rocks, minerals, gems and fossils”; DK Publishing, Inc. New York, New York. ISBN: 0-7566-0962-3 I bought this book at the Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC. It is a book created from that marvelous exhibition. I will write a full article about this breath-taking experience in the next issue (May 2008) of Jewelers Xpress, you may subscribe filling the form below.
It is a simple, straight-forward information tool about precious stones, it does not have detailed gemological information, but for jewelry making I think it is one of the best books around; and it’s a pleasure to skim through too. See books with step-by-step projects reviewed for you in the next issue of Jewelers Xpress. Subscribe now it’s FREE and share your metalicious newsletter with your friends.
There are thousands of beading books about jewelry making. For example in Amazon.com, when searching under the Books search for “Jewelry” you get 113,886 results (search date: Saturday, 5th of April, 2008). When will you get through 113,886 results? How can you decipher what’s good and what’s not? What is a credible author and what’s spam? But, I’ve gone through that for you (and will keep on looking for more beading books and jewelry making books for you and me). I have told you before that I’m a nerd; I love books, cannot have enough of them and wish I could purchase all of my Amazon’s wish and shopping list! Any donations are welcome! =)
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