What's Happening at Allegory Gallery?
Hello Friends!
William here from Allegory Gallery! Welcome to a new blog post series that we're starting! Every once in a while, we'll post a recap of some of the exciting things that are happening here at Allegory Gallery. Many of you know that we're a great source for interesting and well-curated beads, but what some people don't realize is all the things we get up to in the background and all the items we create in-house in our workshop at Star Cottage Studio. So, we hope you'll enjoy this series of blog posts and share them with your friends!
First off, you may have noticed the new look of our website homepage! We've been working hard on making sure our site is more personal, and while we still have more work to do, we're happy to have debuted the first phase of this project this week! We hope you'll let us know how you like it. You can get more details about why we're making this change in our other blog post here.
Last weekend, Andrew had a teaching job at Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh. I went along to be the TA, and we had a great time teaching a full-day class on Drawing and Mark-Making on Enamel. We had such great students and had age ranges from about 13 years old up to 68! It was really great, and everyone made such wonderful projects! Andrew will be teaching there again a few times this summer. The next class is Decals on Enamel and will be this Saturday, July 5th. For more information about his Pittsburgh classes and to sign up, click here.
We've also been very busy working on new items at Star Cottage Studio. For those who don't know, Star Cottage is where our jewelry workshop is housed, along with our filming studio, bead room, and shipping department. Andrew has been working on various projects and doing some trials and experimentations. He's been working on his process for enameling on steel and working through getting all the steps just right to be able to put some items into production. Enameling on steel is different than on copper and even uses different enamels. So, this is quite the learning process, but he's making lots of great progress already.
He's also working on a gold-leaf sgraffito technique by Keith Lewis that he tried while he was at Touchstone Center for Crafts learning with Barbara McFadyen. I think these are coming out really great, and I can't wait to see how he finishes these pendants!
I have also been working on a number of things. I've started practicing powder-coating a bit and have been working on some trials of some earring and pendant blanks that I hope to put into production for sale in our online store. I'm still unsure if I'm going to offer them as components or turn them into finished pieces to sell. But, I've been having fun with the process, and it's something that I can do while Andrew is enameling because while the process is similar, it doesn't require the kiln.
And, I've still been working hard on my pottery. I've been having a lot of fun lately with glazing, and while it used to be that I had more fun creating the vessels, now I feel as if I'm making vessels just so that I have something to glaze on! It's been a learning process, and I have some new little items in the works, so be sure to stay tuned! I've just added a bunch of new pieces into our online store, so if you'd like to see what I have available, check out my page on our new site here.
We also wanted to mention that Andrew will be teaching at Peters Valley in Layton, NJ this August (15th-19th). This will be a class focusing on mixed media approaches to powder coating. If you're interested in how you can use powder coating in your jewelry creations (very affordably), we hope you'll consider signing up. You can get more information and sign up for this class by clicking here.
We hope you liked this little tour of the other side of our business and seeing a bit more about what happens in the studio and in the world outside of our normal bead business. We get up to a lot here, and we hope to continue doing this series of posts to help you learn more about us and understand all that we do here at Allegory Gallery. It's a wonderful life, and we're so thankful to have you all be a part of it!
Your friends,
William & Andrew
PS…Want even more behind-the-scenes looks at what we do? Join us on our Patreon! Our Patreon members always get great sneak peeks and insider information first! Click here to visit our page and subscribe—plans start at only $3/month. Your subscription helps us by supporting our research and development of new products and the upkeep of our studio space.