Fine Recycled Jewelry

Thesis Project

Design

Featured here is my thesis project for metal smithing while in college. I chose to revisit and focus on a concept that I grew up with, skateboarding. As a child in a small town in Montana, one of my only outlets and opportunities to get away was to go skateboarding with my close friends. Although I was never that skilled, it was the act of skating and trying something several times until you got it just right that stuck with me.

Over the years I experimented with making crude jewelry out of aluminum and cheap woods. It was not until I tried using the remnants of a broken skateboard in my garage that I found something that spoke to me.

These rings and earrings are a more fine jewelry approach to incorporating a recycled material and giving it value. The focus was to only use old decks that I had saved up over time and pair them with cast sterling silver pieces all made from scratch. In doing so I used every tool in my technological wheelhouse to produce them. Each design was designed and specified in a modeling software, 3D printed to size in ABS plastic, lost wax casted, assembled, and hand finished for a final exhibit presentation.