Earrings

Hand-crafted Knot Jewelry:
Decorative Marlingspike Seamanship rendered in precious metal.

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These are all made with just knotted wire. To see some earrings that incorporate precious stones, click here.

One of my customers wanted to get his wife some ear-rings to match a wedding band, and inspired me to create this pair. They are 5-lead by 6-bight rings, tied with white and yellow 18K gold twisted wire. (They're suspended from ordinary earwires, which, though I make them by hand, aren't nearly as interesting as the rings.)

New as of March of 2005, these are 5x13 Turk's Head rings, dangling from some commercial chain left over from another project, and hung on earwires. All 18K gold, but incredibly light, the pair weighs about 1.8g, total.

These are about the size of a nickel, and the next time I tie them I will definitely use thinner wire! They are 5x9 Turk's Heads, tied in 18K gold. There is another page that shows one of these and some others, for size comparison purposes.

This is a five-by-six knot, in twisted wire. Note the different way I finished off the top, with a weaver's knot instead of a solder joint. (That's the same as a bowline, when applied in a different setting, and it is also referred to as a sheet bend, in still another. Here, it's a weaver's knot.

All of it, the knot and the wire, is 18K yellow gold. I can't get kidney style wires in 18K so that's why I have to make them myself, since I like all of my work to be the same karat.

Here is a pair of earrings made with flattened five-by-eleven knots. I used yellow-green gold for these, so I had to make the hooks and connecting chains as well, to match the color properly. Elsewhere you will see a pendant made by the same method, with several strands instead of a single one. I didn't want to make these too heavy, after all, but a pendant isn't as likely to whack you on the head when you move around as dangly earrings are. (I am going by hearsay, not being an earring sort of guy, but it seems logical enough to me.)

These two earrings are the same knot as the links in the matching bracelet shown above them. The chains and hooks were made at the same time with the same wire, to make sure everything came out the same color.

Here's a pair of actual rings, left as rings. I made them as bezels for a pair of opals, but this is how they look "empty". The knot is a five-lead by fourteen-bight Turk's Head, tied in very fine wire, and they're about a third of an inch in diameter. Any size or pattern of knot will work fine in this configuration.