Tuesday, October 14, 2014

towers in a locket

This lovely gold-filled locket came from an antique store in Aurora, Oregon...such a nice locket. I cleaned it, then wanted to fill it. I thought of the embossed stocknagel* I got from a store in Latvia. So I cut two ovals from two stocknagel--one of Kotnov Tower in Tábor, Czech Repubic, and one of the Mariatrost Basilica in Austria--to fit the locket's two sides. I shaped them to give them a slight dome, backed them with two cut-to-fit pieces of thin brass and put them behind the metal picture frames. The chain is composed of an antique gold-filled watch chain and a gold-filled necklace chain section. I found a cool antique spring clasp to close the necklace. See part of the process in the pics below.








*Stocknagel are small plaques made of brass or sheet metal that would be attached to a walking stick with a few small nails. Collected as souvenirs, the custom began as a European alpine tradition in which the medallions covering the walking stick served as documentation and commemoration of a hiker's travels.