Peacock, by Heikki Seppä. Photo courtesy Nick Felkey.

When master metalsmith Heikki Seppä began his career as a metalsmith, silvermithing was strongly influenced—even dominated, according to Seppä–by the silver hollowware industry. Hollowware makers had become focused on speed and mass production. As a result, the forms they used to make tea and coffee pots, candlesticks, and other silver pieces, were greatly influenced by the prolific industrial use of rotation forms—forms that can be created on a lathe.

Other forms had been used in the past when silversmithing was still largely done by hand. But Seppä discovered that the language of these creative forms, forms that emphasized the fluidity of the metal rather than the speed of mass production, was rapidly disappearing. Continue reading →