Studio Report #2 – Murphy’s Law Edition

Welcome to the latest studio report!  To recap, our last post mentioned the intention to release a winter collection in November, finish the initial concept designs in July, and plans to begin fabrication in August.

Let’s just say, things have not gone to plan.  But that’s okay!

What we have done is sourced our gemstones and brought in more materials.  We have selected some lovely Sleeping Beauty turquoise that we think collectors will fawn over.  The mine where Sleeping Beauty comes from is closed, so getting ahold of specimens can be difficult and costly, but we think the product is worth it!

The studio is still a mess of construction which has prevented production from moving forward.  As anyone with project management experience can tell you, big undertakings often slip in schedule.  But, it happens, and the plan is to try to work around the construction to start production.  It will not be a perfect process, but nothing is.

Outside of failing to meet production goals (which is fine – really, it is), October was still a great month in the studio.  While production of new designs didn’t move forward, we revisited some older pieces that were in progress before the studio construction.  These are one-off, prototype pieces whose designs informed our upcoming collection, so we’re looking forward to getting those pieces resolved and clearing out the fabrication backlog.  Cluttered benches make for cluttered minds! 

October also had the studio immersed in studying sterling silver granulation.  While the process is a little finicky, we’re excited to continue refining the technique so we can incorporate it into future designs.  For the purposes of educating our buyers, we might draft an article about granulation, so be on the lookout for that in future posts if you’re interested in learning more about it!

Moving forward, we plan to continue working on pieces and providing progress reports about our goings-on.  One challenge we will need to address is dealing with an unheated studio over winter, so weather will be a factor in how prolific our production will be.  Freezing temperatures interfere with the soldering process because it’s more challenging to keep the metal heated at the appropriate temperature for joining, but the greater issue is more about comfort while working.  Worker comfort and safety is more important to our studio than trying to meet a deadline or trying to push out products, so if it’s too cold, the studio will be closed.

For those who are wondering, we have not settled on a new target release date for the collection.  An option we are considering is rather than waiting to release all new pieces at once, we would instead release new pieces as they are completed, just so there will be at least some kind of offering available sooner rather than later since no new deadline is set.  No decision has been made to date, but we will be sure to announce any changes as they’re confirmed.

We hope you enjoyed this recent installment of our studio report, even if it didn’t necessarily have all good news. 

Thanks for reading, and until next time!

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