... and go back in time.
From my training in India, with traditional silversmiths, I kept a few small footprints 😁
I spent so many happy hours, sitting on the floor in a roadside shop, learning with such an appetite everything I could about jewelry techniques! So I still have a few traces:
* to sit on the floor to stretch the silver wires, holding my drawplate with my feet It's more convenient to dose your strength, you can push with your feet while you pull with your hands! And I feel being part of a very long chain of craftsmen who have been repeating a simple gesture with a basic tool for centuries.
* the irrepressible desire to drink a chai when I think about a technical problem
... but today I rather make myself coffee! With Hari, my master jeweler in Pushkar, we used to hail the chai-wallah as soon as he passed through the street with his overloaded tray on his head, to order hot and far too sweet chaï... It was still the time when tea was served in raw earth cups, imperfectly round but so pretty, meant to be thrown away after use so that they could return to nature with the first rain. This ritual was so precious to me that when luckily, the path of one of my friends passes through Pushkar, I send him to bring a chaï to Hari, (who is still installed in the same small shop 20 years later).
* Find out how I can make the tool I need
I learned the trade with traditional means and very basic tools, far from the benches of jewelry and design schools, and it was a fabulous source of ingenuity and creativity. I have never equipped myself with sophisticated or electrical equipment (apart from the polisher), and I passionately love my old tools that have a soul, and which are sometimes also one-of-a-kind pieces!
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