Experiments in connections and fabrication with Beads and Links
Written by Lia Musante, Touchstone Studio Management Intern 2025
Creative approaches to designing, soldering, and cold-connecting linked components will be the focus of an upcoming jewelry workshop with illustrator, jeweler, and ceramicist Zachery Lechtenberg. Beads and links are “a way to experiment and get comfortable with fabrication”, and “small-scale ways to test out ideas,” says Lechtenberg.
The five-day workshop from July 21-25 will get students thinking outside of the jewelry box: “My approach to jewelry pulls from a lot of other mediums, I’m constantly thinking about how I would fabricate things from outside a jeweler’s perspective. My primary background is illustration, so I’m thinking about how to apply pattern and make things more graphic. In working with clay I’m thinking about making tabs to things you can’t solder to; thinking about ways you can connect other materials.”
Students will learn a variety of techniques in making connective forms with sheet and wire, fabricating, wire bending, and tab setting. They will then decorate those forms using pattern and texture through roller printing, carving, and grinding. “It will be a good environment to ask questions, fail, have the time to solve problems, and hopefully walk away with a little bit more comfort in creating hollowforms and beads and things in their own studio practice. And maybe there will be enamel.”
The workshop will be an opportunity for students to learn and hone in their soldering skills—the beads and links are small-scale and often repetitive. “We’ll do multiple soldering techniques, like soldering a jump ring to a form or a hollowform, using chip solder, or sweat soldering.” Students can choose to make “bracelets, links on a chain, pendants, or charms, depending on if you want one big thing or a bunch of one-off smaller pieces.” Students can drive the direction of their beaded projects based on their own ideas and goals.
“Typically in my classes there’s a lot of trouble-shooting. Normally I teach enamel and things will pop up as you’re making a piece. So I am showing you not only how to do it, but how to problem-solve and work-around things as they come up in the studio.”
Lechtenberg’s interdisciplinary background is the basis for their iconographic and playful work: “Craft is my bread and butter, it’s how I survive. There are so many different pockets of craft and I’ve been fortunate enough to bounce around to different media, and the possibilities are endless if you don’t let yourself get stuck to one form.” “Craft is history in an object. It’s passing down history, and sometimes culture. I’m not culturally-linked to my craft but that is a thing. It’s the history of handed-down skills.” Come learn new techniques and play outside your comfort zone with Zachery Lechtenberg this summer at Touchstone Center for Crafts in Farmington, PA!
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Beads and Links! Links and Beads!
JULY 21-25 | 5-DAYS (MON-FRI)
Instructor: Zachery Lechtenberg
All Levels
Through this workshop, participants will focus on making beads and links with the idea of quick investigations in process and design. You will be pushed to experiment with various techniques, such as fabricating, wire bending, and tab setting, to create forms that appeal to your own unique aesthetics. As we make beads and links, participants can add pattern and texture through a variety of processes like roll printing, carving, grinding, and enameling. By the end of the workshop, we will join these components together to create wearable pieces of one-of-a-kind jewelry.