Keum Boo is an ancient Korean technique which allows you to fuse a layer of 24 karat fine gold onto your silver work. It's a brilliant way to add some golden luxury to jewellery without the high price of working in solid gold. The method uses heat and pressure to create a permanent bond between the two materials and (once the preparation is done) is a quick and simple process giving fantastic results. We absolute love the way it can transform jewellery pieces and here are five of our favourite jewellers who use it in their work.
Hendrike Barz-Meltzer is a designer & maker based in Hertfordshire who works with various materials, including precious & non-precious metals. Born and grown up in East Germany these experiences shaped her character and work. She has a curiosity about a diverse range of subjects - history, humanity and human rights and making - anything - a cake, a ring, a tool or a pair of slippers. It has fascinated her since childhood – then an ever-present necessity brought about by the shortages of the East German economy - it provides for her today a sense of satisfaction when demystifying another subject or technique thus far unknown.
Hendrike is often drawn to Japanese aesthetics and strives for well-designed pieces, mostly abstract, with an element of the unexpected: the off-centre, the unequal, non-matching and the odd.
Find more about about her and her work here https://www.hendrikebarz.com/
Becky works from Rosehill workshop in Brighton, a co-operative of designer crafts people. Her work is a mixture of jewellery and three-dimensional illustration designed to be both worn and displayed. With drawing as a starting point and the great outdoors as a source of wonder and constant inspiration, elements of narrative are captured in silver and transformed into miniature scenes telling out across the surface of a brooch or hanging as a pendant.
The pieces are individually made by hand from sheet silver and copper with 9ct gold and 22ct gold leaf for detailing. The metal is pierced out, then textures or patterns are applied to the surface using a rolling mill. These components are then layered together, soldered, and finished with matt, oxidised and polished surfaces to add depth and tone.
Find out more about her and her work here https://www.beckycrow.co.uk/.
Cathy has been making jewellery for 30 years, inspired by patterns and objects found around her; a landscape, a cobbled street, a broken structure. She used a variety of techniques including molten, reticulated and fused silver, to create an organic feel with which to represent a scene such as a shoreline or a broken piece of timber, construction methods to evoke a more structural or architectural feel as well as fused gold (Keum Boo), inlaid vitreous enamels, precious and semi-precious stones for eye-catching and vibrant results.
Find out more about her and her work here https://www.cathytimbrelljewellery.co.uk/
Jessica Briggs is a designer / maker of contemporary jewellery, working predominantly in silver with gold. Her distinctive and desirable pieces
are exhibited throughout the UK.
Originally a textile designer, Jessica draws on her print-making skills to
create textures and patterns on silver. These are often layered with golds
using an ancient Korean technique called kuem-boo and then further
enhanced by oxidation, producing a palette of subtle greys.
Helen is a jeweller, working in silver and gold, drawing inspiration from the urban textures and leafy details found in her home town of Nottingham. She uses metal stamps to ‘draw’ on the surface of the silver, creating illustrative pieces of jewellery full of detail and pattern for you to enjoy.
She uses a mixture of casting and fabricating to create her jewellery, her work is caste in the historic jewellery quarter in Birmingham and all the designing, finishing, fabricating, posting and packing, photography and admin in her home studio in Nottingham.
Find out more about her and her work here. https://www.sheredesign.co.uk/
We are lucky enough to have Helen as one of our NJS tutors teaching her signature style of Keum Boo. The next class with Helen will be on the 20th April 2024, Details of the next Keum Boo class are here