Practically none. However, all my life I've been surrounded by people who regard making things, either artistic or useful, as a natural part of daily life. Some took it to extremes, like my father. He had the attitude that it was better to spend an hour or so turning a "found object" into a specialized tool for a specific project than it was to take twenty minutes to drive to the hardware store and buy something that would do the same job. I tend to make my own tools, too, or use ordinary tools in innovative ways.

2. What originally inspired you to "weave with wire"?

Well, there was this girl... I'm not kidding, but I guess it does sound funny, and hardly believable. You see, I lived in a marina on a small sailboat, and of course, I used fancy knots to decorate it where appropriate: coachwhipping, turk's heads, mats, all sorts of things that I've been tying all my life in string and rope. Anyway, she saw my fancy work and told me that she'd seen a catalog with knots tied in silver and gold and asked me if I'd ever considered doing the same thing. Years later, I learned that the catalog had to have been from AGA Correa, so I certainly owe them some gratitude.

3. How do you describe your jewelry to people?

They're knots, real knots, that could theoretically be untied if one didn't mind voiding the warranty. I've been asked why I don't just take an impression of a successful ring and cast it multiple times, and the answer to that is simply that they have to remain knots in order to satisfy my own expectations.

When I first started out, it was to make gifts, so selling wasn't involved. (No, that girl never got one. I took too long learning how to do it. Color me fortunate.) I gave them to my sisters, to other relatives, and wore them around, and then someone insisted on buying one from me. I'd probably made fewer than half a dozen by then, and it was still very hard, but I guess that ring technically started my "professional" jewelry-making career. So, at first, it was direct sales in person. For a while, it was just a matter of occasionally running into someone who wanted one and allowing myself to be persuaded to tie it for them.

In the late nineties I put together a website, just to show them off to a wider audience. I've been online for about fifteen years, and many of my friends live too far away for me to see them oftener than every year or so, and it was a way to let them see what I was up to. I believe I included a paragraph on that page that said I'd consider requests, but it wasn't primarily geared to commercial pursuits. As the website grew, I added more information to allow orders to be submitted, but I think the nicest compliment I've ever gotten on my site came from a visitor who said that it is "the least commercial commercial site I've ever seen." It's still primarily a gallery for me to show my work, in my eyes, even though it is also the easiest way for people to buy from me.

I've had some of my work on display in local "brick and mortar" galleries and in one local jewelry store and have sold just a few pieces from the galleries.

Just in the past couple of years I've been working to enter shows, and I've gotten accepted in a couple. Since I work all the time at my regular job, and since I have serious tendencies toward procrastination, I often find myself attending shows as a patron instead of as a vendor, but that is changing. The last two shows I attended were technically profitable, and I took second place for artistic merit at the one that was juried, so I have great hopes for the future.

5. How long did it take you to develop your technique?

I didn't work at it constantly, so that's not an easy question to answer. The first successful ring I made took me about forty hours, and it was pretty pathetic. It was very uneven, for one thing, and I had no clue what size it was going to end up when I started. Later rings took progressively less time, and now I can usually make a ring in 18K gold wire in less than ten hours, sometimes less than six, depending primarily on the complexity of the knot I choose to tie. Call it two years of initial fumbling around, at which point I could generally tie a knot that would look reasonable.

There was a period of several years when I did no jewelry at all but still tied knots in string, so I was developing easier ways to design and execute specific knots. In the early nineties, I wanted to make a very special ring for a very special lady, and I went back to work on doing knots in wire. I was still just guessing at the sizes, though, and I would tie at least one, sometimes two or three, "practice" rings that I ended up giving away to relatives or whoever they'd fit.

At this time I was going back to school (University of South Florida) and I decided that it was silly to make good grades in mathematics and remain clueless about how big to start a ring to make it a specific size, so in the middle nineties, I worked on a formula for predicting the results. I was moderately successful, but I still like to make prototypes in silver before committing a length of gold or, worse yet, platinum wire since there's nothing to be done with kinked wire but draw it thinner or melt it down.

6. What made you decide to make your own wire?

If I were to invest in all the different sizes of wire I use, I'd have a lot of money tied up in it. I still need to keep different colors on hand, and sometimes I will mix and make my own. I watched a jeweler friend make a bit of wire and it looked like fun. He told me that when he needed some, he usually just mixed it and drew it himself since he only needed small quantities. I've gotten lazy in my old age and usually buy a coil of moderately thick wire, 18ga, and then draw it down to the sizes I want, but there are still times when I melt gold and pour it into an ingot, roll it out, and draw it down. I save all my scrap and try to keep the "clean" scrap separate so that I can recycle it that way.

7. Which came first, serious interest in knots or making jewelry?

Definitely knots -- my oldest brother came back from the US Navy when I was about ten years old, and he had gotten into fancy knot-work. I found it very interesting, and as I learned more, my interests expanded. My sisters taught me knitting, though I didn't take that very far, and I also dabbled in net making. I may possibly have tied some macrame, but it seems unlikely.

8. Do you make any jewelry using conventional techniques?

I once used the lost-wax method to cast a simple silver pendant, but that's about it. When I make the base for a post-style earring, it involves soldering several pieces of wire into a shape that is unrelated to knots. Other than those two, I don't really think any of my work is "conventional" jewelry making.

9. What advice would you give to others who are considering drawing their own wire?

Learn how to anneal the wire properly, for one thing. I think that I'd want to have a few more tools as well. Though, I still do it mostly by hand. They have tables set up with a vise at one end and a winch at the other, and it would have been easier for me if I'd started out with one of those.

10. How long have you been "knotting" precious metal jewelry?

I have an old picture of my work, taken on a sheet of newsprint that showed a date, December of 1981, so it must have been at least that long ago. There were several rings and pendants in the picture but few enough that I could have produced them within the previous year.

My current setup uses a Nikon CoolPix 990 and a Cloud Dome, and I almost always shoot my jewelry outdoors on a fairly bright day. I can get good results with a regular camera, and some of the pictures on the site were taken with a Nikon N60 and a macro lens. Then they are either scanned from the print or dumped directly to a file by the developers I sent the film to, but it's so much easier with the digital camera that I would strongly recommend it, especially for web publishing.

12. Are their other artists whose work is similar to yours or is yours singularly unique?

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I started out because of having heard of AGA Correa, second hand. I have links on my website to all of the current jewelry companies that I know of where knotted jewelry is available, and I have occasionally sent potential customers to them when appropriate. For a long time there was only one person, other than myself, who made truly complex Turk's Head jewelry, Grey Chisholm of Fair Winds Design, but very recently a fellow wire-worker showed me some brass rings that he's learned to do after studying my instructions. As far as I know, though, my more complex rings and bracelets are still the most intricate examples in existence, and my knotted chains are unique.

13. Any advice for someone who may wish to pursue this method of jewelry making/knotting further?

Be patient, and don't get discouraged. My first attempts were terrible. Trust me on that. (You'll have to I cut them up!)

14. You indicated in your web site that you have begun to make some of your own tools and equipment? How successful has that been?

Very successful. I've actually been making my own tools right along out of various materials. The first rings I made were tied on wooden billiard cues, as I could drive small nails into the wood to locate bends in the wire. Chopsticks are very useful, either cut up or sharpened or just as placeholders. I put handles on doll needles to make little probes to poke through a knot and make a path for the wire to go through. You've seen the Wig Jig, I'm sure -- I didn't know there was such a thing when I made patterns of holes in a block and lined pegs up to tie wire around them. Speaking of wire, I use a lot of coat hangers along the way also. It's amazing how many different jobs they'll do, as clamps, hooks, stuff like that. I made a fixture out of coat-hanger wire that lets me tumble chains for hours without getting knots in them.

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All graphics provided by Loren Damewood.

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