Why Wire?

Why wire?  Well, that is a very good question.

If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know how I fell into jewellery-making and thus wireworking.  But why am I still playing with wire?  Why haven't I diversified into some other branch of jewellery-making?  It seems to be fairly common for wireworkers to move on to working with metal clay, or at the very least to soldering precious metal.  This hasn't happened to me.  I'm still a dyed-in-the-wool cold-connections-loving wire-wrapper.  I did bite the bullet a couple of years back and buy myself a torch to make ball headpins with, but it's never had even a moment's contact with solder.

I think the main reason for my lack of exploration down other routes is that there still seems to be so much to challenge me with my chosen medium.  I dislike using ready-made components in my wire pendants, so it's always a challenge to create the motifs I need from wire and beads.  I have found myself struggling with certain elements, which is tempting me to make the embellishments I need from polymer clay.  To me, that isn't 'cheating', so it would be acceptable, and I'm not averse to the idea of mixed media pieces.  I still haven't stopped trying to find ways to depict the things I want to, using just wire and beads, though.

Wire can do so many different things.  Because of the immense variety of colours and gauges - and the fact that you can mix both of those up by twisting, plaiting etc. - there's so much you can do with it.  I haven't found a way to make very tiny, sharply-delineated motifs yet (although I give it my best shot!) and depicting water is not 100% successful, but often if an idea jumps into my head and keeps insistently poking my brain, I'll find a way to make it happen.

There's no doubt wire is not as versatile as - for example - clay of any type.  There are limits to what you can achieve in the way of texture, form and detail, but somehow, that's part of its charm.

This may have completely failed to explain to you what it is about wire that I find so appealing.  But perhaps the fact that I can't explain it well shows that I really haven't finished exploring it.  That's my excuse, anyway! ;)