Fabulous Woven Jewelry by Mary Hettmansperger
Fabulous Woven Jewelry:Plaiting, Coiling, Knotting, Looping & Twining with Fiber and Metal by Mary Hettmansperger
I was really looking forward to learning the more advanced wire weaving techniques in this book. I got what I wanted from it, which was to learn the wire weaving techniques that I needed to learn. So, from that, Fabulous Woven Jewelry can definitely help you learn the many techniques it has to offer and will undoubtedly provide you with the inspiration any good book should offer.
As a fiber artist and basketmaker, Hettmansperger uses many different materials as well as wire to accomplish her projects. Her strength is in working with fiber and it shows. The Materials and Tools, etc., sections are well presented and thorough, giving the reader lots of options to work with. I like that’s she’s also presented information on finishes for the jewelry. In general, she’s provided a wide palette for art jewelers to choose from.
The first two chapters are on Plaiting and Twining with eleven projects in all. There are hand drawn step-by-step drawings that are adequate to convey how these techniques are done. There’s enough diversity in the projects to help you become adept at any technique and certainly more than enough to inspire. The projects are simple but challenging and produce primarily bohemian style jewelry although it’s easy enough to expand into other design styles. The non-wire projects are quite nicely done with tight hand weaving.
The next chapters are on Looping, Knotting and Coiling with a total of thirteen projects in all. Hettmansperger explores all of her techniques giving the reader a lot of good information to work with. She also provides some information on variations of techniques.
The 10 page Gallery section of the book includes completed works by fiber, basket and metal art jewelers and is definitely an inspiration with some lovely eye candy.
My main complaint with Fabulous Woven Jewelry: Plaiting, Coiling, Knotting, Looping and Twining With Fiber And Metal is that Hettmansperger’s skills working with wire and metal are not keen. So the reader may be left with an inaccurate vision of just how fabulous woven wire and metal jewelry can look. That’s just my opinion but as I said earlier, the book does deliver on conveying how to do the five various techniques and it does that quite well. This book is well worth purchase for that reason alone.
