Handmade Jewelry Blog by Jewelry Designer John S Brana
The creative process Blog of San Francisco Jewelry Designer John S. Brana. In-depth articles on designing and marketing handmade jewelry and handcrafted fine art jewelry.
Red Patinated Copper Tear Drop Earrings by San Francisco jewelry designer John S Brana
These Red Patinated Tear Drop Earrings are as beautiful as an autumn day. Featuring hues of Copper, Red, Maroon, and Brown, with a Raku-style texture. No two earrings are alike, making them truly unique.
Price:$65.00
 Lime Anodized Aluminum Lily Pad Earrings |
Celebrate all things green–and immortally stylish. These lime anodized aluminum earrings do just that courtesy of a dangling lily pad. Meticulously handmade with a mesmerizing mix of texture and light that captures the season’s most-wanted look in jewelry.
Price:$40.00 |
Phlox Anodized Aluminum Lily Pad Earrings
An intense violet gleam blooms from these fabulous lily pad earrings. Shimmer and shine in head-turning style with these 2″ Anodized Aluminum Lily Pad Phlox earrings. Meticulously crafted with a mesmerizing mix of texture and light that captures the season’s most-wanted look in jewelry.
Price:$40.00
Triangular Hammered Aluminum Earrings with Onyx
The triangular drop hoop design of these aluminum earrings is fashioned with a highly polished surface and a lightly hammered texture. Creating interesting dimension and undeniable style, these earrings feature Onyx gemstone beads, set on Nu Gold wire inside of the aluminum rims. The use of black, gold, and silver creates an eye-catching spectacular look that is guaranteed to turn heads.
Price:$95.00
MJSA - A Man's World - Designing and Manufacturing Jewelry for Today's Man
Designing and Manufacturing Jewelry for Todays Man
“Simplistic designs that showcase a texture instead of a stone have a wide appeal with men, says Karri Ann Frerichs for San Francisco—based designer John Brana. If a stone is used, it’s usually solo and set flush with the surface. In addition, she reports that men look for pieces with significant weight that offer durability, shying away from lightweight pieces that they don’t perceive will withstand the daily wear and tear of an active lifestyle. “For these design preferences, John has developed sterling silver collections that focus on textures and minimalistic designs,” Frerichs explains.
Brana often opts for fabrication over casting to make his hammered and chased pieces. “I can make a simple band in about 20 minutes versus the time involved in making the master, creating rubber molds, injecting the wax, spruing, investing, casting, despruing, and finishing,” says Brana. “Casting would make sense if the designs were heavily patterned, or if I was doing production runs of 50+ rings at a time and could move them out of inventory within 60 days. With fabrication, you can do small runs and not carry any inventory. It also allows you the flexibility to size on the fly, and the ability to customize band width, thickness, and stone choice with ease.”
MJSA Features Mens Jewelry by Designer John S Brana
For design inspiration, Brana looks to natural and organic themes to create his signature textures of Redwood, Reptile, Wave, Tonga, and Sierra. The designer has developed a loyal customer base by turning clients into collectors, making it easy (especially with many pieces retailing under $300) to amass a complete collection based on the texture the client likes best. The brand’s bestseller is Redwood.
Mens Jewelry Sierra Collection by Designer John S Brana
“Typically, our male customers start with a thumb ring, look next to the matching bracelet or cufflinks, and round out their collection with a pendant on a rawhide or link chain,” says Frerichs, noting the company’s key demographic is men ages 20 to 35 who live in cosmopolitan areas, appreciate fashion, purchase designer labels, and look for quality over price point.”
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New to the Tonga Collection is this men’s hand fabricated ring. I hand fabricated this ring using 4 sheets of Sterling Silver and one sheet of PMC (used for the side “Tonga” texture), then set it with a 7.5 carat faceted Blue Topaz. Stay tuned for more ring additions to all of my Men’s Jewelry Collections.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with various textures and techniques to perfect my skills at anticlastic raising. This bracelet was done in sterling silver using traditional anticlastic raising techniques. I tried to pay particular attention to minimizing marring by the forming hammer, sanded using 400, 700, and 1000 grit sandpaper, then buffed to a mirror finish.
The next texture I tried was chasing. Chasing is a technique that is used to groove, furrow, channel , or indent utilizing the plasticity quality of metal. In this case, I used copper. Chasing is a relatively slow process, but with lots of practice can result in a continuous surface of metal essentially of the same thickness and texture. This is the exact opposite of the previous technique where you try to minimize marring.
This bracelet uses the same chasing technique, but instead of a chasing hammer, I fashioned a custom hammer by cutting groves into the face of a flat hammer (similar to a meat tenderizer), then fished off the bracelet by raising it.
The last application was to texturize the copper using a traditional ball-peen hammer.
For a great resource article on Anticlastic Raising by Michael Good, check out Jewelry Artist Magazine July 2007 AdornmentCraft
This is my first attempt at incorporating both Sterling Silver and PMC in a ring. I hand fabricated this ring using 4 sheets of Sterling Silver and one sheet of PMC (used for the side “Wave” texture), then set it with a 12 carat Chalcedony cabochon. Stay tuned for more ring additions to all of my Men’s Jewelry Collections.
