Pietra Dura Inspired Necklace.. WIP

Pietra Dura or Parchin kari is the art of making beautiful pieces with stone inlays... I made a pendant with Cold porcelain, inspired by this style of work.

Obviously, the process is not anywhere near as complicated as inlaying stone into a base piece, by painstakingly carving out shapes and then grinding and fitting pieces into the hollows.. 

 I wanted to go for a Mughal motif , and so decided to make the shape of the pendant a half moon. While it was still soft, I added flower shaped depressions on the surface to mimic the cut out shapes in the stone base.


I let the base dry a bit before starting on the 'inlay'. Instead of adding colored bits of Cold Porcelain  I decided to go completely white and then color it later.










The whole design filled with white Cold Porcelain and then smoothed out. I also put in three holes, one at each end and one at the center of the portion that would face down. At this stage, it was left to dry for about 24 hours. 



Cold Porcelain jewelry - Pietra Dura  Once it was dry, the edges were sanded, and then the inlay work was painted . White portions with a touch of brown to indicate white marble. Blue, grey , black and gold for Lapiz Lazuly and banded green in shades, for Malachite.  The edges were given gold for an ornate look. 




 Glaze was applied and left to dry. Then the necklace was made by stringing a rectangular glass bead on each side and double strands of beads in off-white and Green, with gold spacers, to duplicate the shades of the white marble and malachite.

Cold Porcelain Jewelry

Comments

  1. That's beautiful. You must have a very steady hand to do that fine work. I seem to have developed a slight tremor now that I'm older.

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    1. Thank you so much..it takes a bit of patience..not so sure my hand is that steady...I get tremors when I concentrate ..but love to do this type of work..

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  2. Wow it is a beautiful piece . I love the delicate flowers on the pendant !

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  3. oh fantastic to see how you did this technique!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks... I love to see the work in progress of things too...

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