Síorghrá Custom Ogham Necklaces

These are the first Ogham pendants I have made with gemstones. They were made for a custom request of Ogham necklaces with birthstones.

Both pieces were hand pierced with the Irish Gaelic word "síorghrá" which means eternal love. Piercing is a process where a small saw blade is used to cut a design through the metal. Both of these pendants were made from 18 gauge (.04" thick) sterling silver and measure about 1.692" x 0.525". One has a 5mm AAA grade amethyst (February) cabochon on the bottom and the other has a 5mm garnet (January). Both stones were set using sterling silver handmade bezels.

The bezels for these pendants were made by forming sheet bezel (thin sterling sheet) into rings that fit around the stone. Once the bezel was formed into rings they were sanded to the proper height and soldered onto the Ogham pendants. After cleaning the fire scale from the soldering process off the pieces the stones were set by placing them in the bezels and pushing the metal down around the cabochon stone to hold it in place.

Both pendants were finished off with a soldered jump ring and an 18" sterling boston link chain.

Custom Sonas Ring

This ring is sterling silver with the word 'sonas' (Gaelic for happiness) pierced through the ring in the ancient Ogham alphabet. The band is about 5/16" wide.











It was created as a custom design. This was the first Ogham ring I tried making. I enjoyed making it because the process reminded me of the first rings I made in jewelry class. Were we started with a sheet of metal then cut and formed a ring out of it. Filing the joint so it lines up before soldering.

I am very pleased with how this ring turned out but am not planning on continuing with this style for several reasons. The first being the piercing process would not adapt well to narrower bands. The main reason is a stability factor while sizing the ring. Before I worked on this in sterling silver I did a test run in copper.

I started with the design printed on a piece of paper that I spray mounted to the metal. For balance in this design I added a second drill hole to the end of the word.



The part I wasn't pleased with when making the test ring became apparent when I started to form the ring. Because 'sonas' is cut through the metal it created a weaker point at the top of the O and A causing the letter to spread on one side (shown on right). I was able to avoid that while forming and sizing the sterling ring because I saw it as an issue in the copper test ring. Though I have found that it is possible to avoid the letters spreading as they did, this design will be left as a one of a kind.

The process of testing to see what works and what doesn't is part of what I love about custom work. It gives me a chance to play with designs I may not have thought of otherwise and to push the boundaries of what I can make.

Not much to say today so here are some pictures of pretty things :)
The 'stone' in this ring is Blue Paua Shell. The ring is sterling silver with a half round band for comfort.

Anam Ogham Necklace
Anam is Irish Gaelic for Soul. This one was hand cut in copper. That is one of my gargoyle friends peeking out in the background.

Encircled Moon Phase Necklace.
So often in moon phase jewelry the new moon is left out. I feel the new moon is an important phase as well so made sure to include it when working up this design. It is also hand cut in copper. This is also the first of the smaller size for this design at 1" rather than 2".

Hammered Ring with a Twist
This design was actually one of my happy accidents. I was making sterling braided rings out of 16 gauge wire and mis-measured when cutting the stock wire into 3 equal parts for braiding. I ended up with one piece that was much shorter than the other two. So having 2 pieces of 4 inch wire I thought what would happen if I twisted them together, made a ring, and hammered it out. Well this was the result. I am very pleased with it and have continued making them on purpose.

Well I guess I had more to say than I thought!

Ogham Pendants

Since I have been working with the Ogham pendants quite a bit lately I decided to share a bit about them. I have always been interested in 'other' writing forms. Fascinated by Egyptian hieroglyphs and the small amount of cuneiform that I was able to see in my art history and typography classes. It was especially interesting to see how writing changed over the years, how pictographs transformed into cuneiform.

I have also had a long interest in cultural differences, how words translate, how people express themselves through art and other means of communication, and the day to day interpersonal differences and similarities. With all of that combined with my interest in the Celts and Picts before them it was only natural that I would end up creating pieces in the Ogham alphabet. Through research I found out quite a bit.

The Ogham Alphabet:
Sometimes referred to as the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", Ogham was used between the 4th and 7th centuries AD in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. The initial alphabet consisted of 20 characters with a few more complex characters being added later. The letters were formed by combination of short lines on and at either side of a middle line called a "flesc". With a vertical flesc words are read from bottom to top or right to left with a horizontal flesc.

Although surviving traces of Ogham were inscribed on stone it was probably more commonly inscribed on sticks, stakes, and trees to mark boundaries. There is also evidence from early Irish sagas and legends that indicates Ogham was used for short inscriptions on wood or metal used to relay messages (some cryptic in nature or for magical purposes) or to denote ownership of the object. There is also evidence that suggests that Ogham may have been used to keep genealogy records, numerical tallies of property, and business transactions.

Of the 400-500 remaining inscriptions a handful have been found featuring Ogham along with the Latin alphabet, most of the inscriptions are in an archaic form of Gaelic and Pictish.

Each of the Ogham pendants I have made started with an English word I thought would be a good talisman or a word in English that was requested. From there I set to translating each word into Gaelic cross referencing the translation and meaning of each word with at least 3 sources. Once I was satisfied with the correctness of the translation I then translated the resulting Gaelic word into the Ogham alphabet to create the design for each pendant.

There are a couple of reasons I chose to translate the words into Gaelic before translating them into Ogham. The first is a matter of practicality, since I am using the original alphabet there are only 20 letters that correspond with the 26 letter English alphabet which would leave 6 letters to be approximated by phonetics. I did not like the feel of going that rout so I chose to use Gaelic which is a language that ties more closely to Ogham historically. The other reason is a bit more 'spiritual' in nature. The technique of using 'power words' to create an effect or draw an energy to ones life has been used for centuries. I have spent a lot of time thinking on this practice and realized that words do in fact have power but we don't often think much about the words we use every day. By stepping into another language we have to give active thought to what words mean and their consequences which creates an even greater amount of energy to the power of words we use as talismans.

I am open and welcome to any thoughts you may have so please share. And if you have a moment please check out the Ogham pendants I have listed in my shop. I will be adding more as I get them finished and photographed.

Latest Finished Pieces

I finished up 2 custom orders this week.

Buan (permanent)

This piece was created for a woman who wanted a special gift for the love of her life. We considered several different words and found the perfect word to describe their relationship was "Buan" which is Gaelic for permanent, (effort) sustained, unfailing, lasting, durable, long. She was looking for a word that would express that they could last through whatever was thrown their way.

The second custom piece was a 2 word necklace.

Cridhe Treubh

Cridhe Treubn means Heart Kin in Scottish Gaelic. These were the first Ogham pendants that I cut with 2 words. Thankfully I was able to make them without the piece getting too long. If it had been any longer I would have had to adjust the layout of the piece putting the words next to each other rather than both on the center line which is traditional for Ogham writing.

I also took a break from piercing and polished up a few rings that were just begging me to finish them. A few hammered copper bands and a sterling braided band.