About Us
Who is Pattie Parkhurst?
Meet Pattie. My designs are as beautiful as the mountains in the state of Colorado where I am from and the Tucson desert where I live. You don’t need permission to live life beautifully and passionately and I am proof of that. Don’t just let life happen, make it happen.
If you value creations that are beautiful yet daring and courageous, you will love the designs I have available.
From flowers and tender smoke tendrils to DNA strands and other geometric shapes, each of my designs uses sheets of metal that are sometimes hammered thousands of times to bring traditional anticlastic designs to life.
ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE
I had the opportunity to attend one of Michael Good’s workshops on anticlastic raising years ago and knew right away that was the technique I wanted to use to bring my creations to life. The process is time-consuming and requires patience to create my intricate designs.
Picture-some examples of the ancient gold using the anticlastic raising techniques.
Anticlastic raising was developed by the Irish some 2,500 years ago. In the late Bronze Age, they used primarily carat gold to create over the shoulder adornments, waist bands, and possibly necklaces. They hammered these artifacts using wood and antlers. Today the technique isn’t very common because just one bracelet requires between 1,000 and 2,000 blows with a hammer. The art was lost about 800 years ago, but two men in the 1970’s, one of them Michael Good, devoted their lives to studying how these adornments were created. Eventually, they determined that the technique involved using an antler-like form and repetitive hammering to create anticlastic and sinclastic designs.
“WHAT GORGEOUS EARRINGS! THEY’RE UTTERLY UNIQUE, MODERN, AND YET SOMEHOW ANCIENT. PATTIE WAS EXTREMELY PATIENT AND RESPONSIVE IN HELPING ME CHOOSE STONES. I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER, AND I PLAN TO WEAR THEM OFTEN.”
