Precious Metal Clay Workshops

The Ring Cycle (excerpts from an article written by Joanna Preston)

There's a new craft phenomenon sweeping the West which is gathering up more devotees every day. It's called Precious Metal Clay (PMC) and it’s a material which can be moulded just like clay, but which turns into pure silver (or gold) when it’s fired. It’s hardly surprising that this new materials is proving a godsend to jewellery makers of both the professional and amateur varieties, because it is so incredibly versatile and because it offers up so many new possibilities. The material is 99.9% pure silver pure silver, ground down into a very find powder and then mixed with an organic binder. When it’s heated to the right temperature, the binder burns away and the particle fuse together leaving solid silver. The beauty of PMC is that is can be rolled, squeezed, textured and formed, unlike solid metal. It’s so unlike any other material you can work with to make jewellery, that once you start working with it, you realise the possibilities are endless!

Now here's the science bit!
Developed by the Japanese company Mitsubishi Materials fourteen years ago, Precious Metal Clay (PMC) was developed to bring the Japanese tradition of ceramics into the realm of jewellery. Silver particles, as find in texture as talk, are held together by a clay-like organic binder which, when fire at high temperatures, burns away, fusing the silver particles together and leaving pure metal behind. The resulting piece is a slightly shrunken version of the original, the organic binder now burnt away, but with all the detail preserved and even heightened by the process. The product was adopted by the craft world in the US when it was introduced in the mid-90s and is becoming increasingly more popular here, especially with jewellery makers. There are three different types of PMC, varying in density (and consequently firing times and shrinkage) and a 22kt gold version all of which it is now possible to buy in the UK from Shiney Company.