'Acorn & Oak Leaf' Necklace

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This necklace features my handmade lampwork glass acorn and oak leaf headpins.

These necklaces are a true labour of love. I've made these on and off over the years, iterating and tweaking the design as I go. The glass components are shaped by hand, by which I mean I don't use a press or mould for them. Each oak leaf shape is painstakingly sculpted by building up the leaf one blob of molten glass at a time and shifting everything into place with a graphite paddle, a brass shaping knife, a razor blade and gravity. In the past I've made my acorns and oak leaf headpins straight onto copper wire. For ages I've wanted to be able to make sterling silver ones but the amount of heat and reheating required to make the glass components means that sterling silver wire would melt in the flame, so for these ones I made the acorns and leaves on the end of a very thin mandrel which results in a glass channel in each piece. This is thoroughly cleaned and dried and then I use a very high-quality epoxy glue to firmly fix the sterling silver wires in place. Once everything is cured, cleaned up and polished, I assemble the necklaces.

Each necklace has a brown acorn and a transparent oak leaf the colour of caramelised sugar. These glass components are affixed to a soldered ring which is threaded onto an 18 inch (45cm) sterling silver belcher chain.

All metal is sterling silver apart from the acorn cup bead cap which is high-quality .999 fine silver plated lead-free brass.

Each acorn and oak leaf cluster pendant measures about 4.5cm (1 3/4 inches) long.

All lampwork glass components are kiln annealed.

Presented in a cotton gift bag.

Note: Although I have captured the beads' colours as best as I can, different screen and monitor settings vary and as such the colours of the beads may appear slightly different in real life than they do on your computer or device. In particular, Apple devices tend to ramp up the reds so please bear this in mind when viewing beads that are red, pink, purple etc.