From Wax to Silver: How I Create My Hand-Carved Silver Jewelry

The pendants in my Handmade Silver Collection begin their lives not as metal, but as wax—a traditional starting point for hand-carved silver jewelry.

Each piece is first carved entirely by hand in jewelry wax, then transformed into silver using an ancient technique known as lost wax casting—a process that has been used for thousands of years to create finely detailed silver jewelry.

Carving the Design in Jewelry Wax

The wax I use is hard and dark green, somewhat like candle wax, but far more refined and rigid. This stiffness allows me to carve extremely fine details that would be impossible in softer materials.

I work with a wide variety of specialized carving tools, many of which resemble the instruments dentists use to clean teeth. Interestingly, there are real parallels between dentistry and jewelry-making: both require steady hands, precise control, and comfort working at a very small scale.

Depending on the complexity of the design, carving a single pendant can take weeks or even months. It is a painstaking process that demands patience, focus, and careful control of tiny tools. While it is slow and meticulous work, it is also something I deeply enjoy. Carving puts me into a zen-like state, where time fades away and my attention is fully absorbed in the act of creating.

You may notice that even when a design includes repeating elements—such as in my Five Crescent Moons Celtic Pentacle Pendant—no two sections are exactly the same. Because every detail is carved by hand, the pieces never have machine-perfect symmetry. That subtle variation is intentional, and it is part of what gives each pendant its organic character and individuality.

Building Organic Details with a Wax Pen

In addition to carving tools, I also use a wax pen, a tool with a tiny heated tip that melts the wax so it can be dripped or drawn onto the surface. This technique allows me to build up texture and movement, and it is especially useful for creating the lively, natural forms seen in leaves, vines, and flowing details.

Lost Wax Casting: Turning Wax into Silver

Once the wax carving is complete, the pendant is ready to be cast in silver.

The wax model is attached to a wax “stalk” and placed inside a metal flask. A plaster-like material called investment is poured into the flask, completely surrounding the wax. The flask is then placed in a vacuum chamber to remove air bubbles, ensuring that even the tiniest details will cast cleanly.

After curing overnight, the flask goes into a kiln for the burnout process. Over many hours, the wax melts and burns away, leaving behind a perfect negative impression of the design inside the hardened investment. During this stage, the flask is heated to extremely high temperatures—around 1600°F.

When the burnout is complete, molten silver is prepared in a furnace. The very hot flask is placed into a vacuum chamber, and the liquid silver is poured in. With the vacuum turned on, the silver is pulled deep into every crevice of the mold, capturing even the finest carved details.

Revealing the Finished Silver Pendant

After casting, the flask—still intensely hot—is quickly submerged into a large bucket of water. The sudden temperature change causes the investment to break apart dramatically, revealing the newly cast silver pendant inside.

At this stage, the piece is no longer wax, but solid silver. It is then carefully refined, oxidized, and polished with small tools and by hand until it is finished and ready to be worn.

Why These Pieces Feel Different

I think some people may feel drawn to these pendants because they can sense the care and time behind them. Each piece is shaped slowly by hand over a long period of time, and that human presence remains in the finished silver. This gives them subtle variations and a sort of "soul", rather than the mass-produced or mechanical feeling of pendants produced by machines.