Design for Silver and Bronze

ME 14AX

This class will teach primarily fabrication techniques and a lost wax casting project. Students will learn piercing saw work in sterling silver, light forming and soldering. Equal attention will be given to technique and manufacturing. Students will receive a tool kit to use for the duration of the Arts Intensive. This course will also introduce students to additional design constraints and considerations when designing for precious metals with emphasis on designing projects with domestically mined materials. During the second week of the course, students will go on local field trips to find material that will be used directly in a project. The students will design and make a work that reflects the experience. Sara and Amanda taught ME298: Silversmithing in Design at Stanford for more than 20 years, as well as being full-time designers at RedStart Design, LLC.

Peek inside the class: Navajo silversmiths share generations of design expertise (2023)

This course fulfills the Creative Expression (CE) requirement.

Meet the Instructor(s)

Amanda Sather

Lecturer

Mandy is a Midwest native and second-generation artist. After earning two degrees from Stanford (a BA in Art History and an MA in Religious Studies) and a period of designing jewelry and teaching metalworking in Florence, Italy, Mandy returned to Stanford for a Design MFA that would allow her to pursue her growing love of teaching.

She always envisioned for herself the life of the lone creative — until she met her cofounder.

Now, Mandy and Sara see their collaborative relationship as an important reason they're able to work so well with their clients. They approach the work without ego from a problem-solving perspective and use a dialog of back-and-forth critique to arrive at the perfect solution and fine-tune the design. This practice primes them to thrive on the same kind of feedback and energy from clients.

As a designer, Mandy is intuitive and fluid. She sketches and carves by hand, relying on her eye and instinct. Her techniques create pieces that are sculptural and flowing, and which often have gentle variations and unexpected turns that infuse the metal and stones with life.

Sara Shaughnessy

Lecturer

Growing up, she dedicated thousands of hours outside of school to the study and practice of art, particularly watercolor and acrylic painting. She shifted focus in college, simultaneously earning a BA in Biology and a BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

She arrived at Stanford for grad school with an NSF grant and a plan to pursue smart products, biomechanics, and MEMS. True to form, she managed to squeeze in an elective course in metalworking — in the very lab where Mandy worked.

Sara's adventurous, entrepreneurial nature helped spark the creation of RedStart Design, and her affinity for new ideas and techniques compliments RedStart's unique niche of designing from scratch with their clients.

Aesthetically, Sara is drawn to pattern, precision, and ordered complexity. She starts with sketches but quickly takes the process digital to create designs with flawless curves and exact angles. Perhaps informed by her earlier nano-scale work, she finds deep satisfaction in "making tiny things perfect."

• (Pic 17) Instructor Sara Shaughnessy working with students in Design for Silver and Bronze.
• (Pic 18) Final projects from Design from Silver and Bronze.
• (Pic 19) A student in Design from Silver and Bronze working on a final project in the PRL.