Highly honed silver

Paul Saitowitz

At a small workbench with her blowtorch’s blue flame mercilessly

turning a sturdy, chord-like piece of raw silver into putty, Shirley

Price performs her version of alchemy.

But instead of turning lead into gold, she turns raw, jagged

metals into twisty works of wearable art. Then she takes the scraps

and turns those into art.

Between the sinewy silver, she inserts ovular stones, sometimes

more than 2 inches long, to punctuate the appearance and create

necklaces, rings and earrings.

“I use every single bit of silver that I can,” she said. “There is

always some use for every little bit.”

Price began silversmith work a decade ago, when she took a class

at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, and has since studied at the

prestigious Revere Academy in San Francisco.

“I was always into crafts and was always pretty good at them, so I

gave silversmithing a try,” Price said. “I picked it up pretty fast,

and I’ve been working on it ever since.”

After learning the lost-wax technique, which involves creating

molds for jewels, she grew uninterested and decided to pursue

fabrication, which is shaping the pieces with a blowtorch.

“It’s more creative that way, and I get things to turn out exactly

the way I want them to,” she said.

Her pieces are available at museum galleries all over the country

-- including the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. They often sell for

upwards of $500. The demand for her jewelry has gotten so high that

it has kept her up through nights getting pieces ready to ship.

“It got to the point where I had to slow down a bit because it was

getting too crazy,” she said. “I work full time and just don’t have

the time to be doing this at all hours of the night. Maybe when I

retire I’ll try to take it a step further.”

She does make pieces if people ask her, but she never takes

commissions.

“The reason I do this is because I love it,” Price said. “It’s fun

and relaxing. If I do something that someone commissions, I’m doing

what they want, and I don’t find that appealing.”

Her jewelry is more suited to galleries than jewelry stores

because of its semiprecious stones and the artistry in her

manipulation of the silver.

“What I do is called bridge jewelry, which is in between fine

jewelry and costume,” she said.

Price treks through the desert once a year to a gem show in

Tucson, Ariz., to pick up stones from around the globe to weave into

the silver.

A world traveler, her stops in Africa and Indonesia have been a

big influence on her jewelry.

“The best silversmiths in the world are in Indonesia,” she said.

“It’s amazing to watch them use the most primitive tools to make the

tiniest pieces. Although I had already started silversmithing when I

first went there, their culture and artistry has rubbed off on my

work.”

Price will display about 90 pieces at the 39th annual Artistic

License Fair Oct. 29 and 30 at Estancia Park in Costa Mesa.