Ukrainian trident pendant

There’s this guy who has made a huge impact on my life at the time I needed it most. He gave me a job, enabling me to move abroad and basically start from scratch. Thus it felt like a blessing when he asked me to make something nice for his wife on their anniversary. The theme seemed simple enough: something with Ukrainian motive.

Sketching

I guess it was only natural that my first idea was about Ukrainian national emblem, which is a trident of a sort. The challenge was to tweak it somehow to make it qualify as a lovely anniversary gift. At some point I got a hint – a picture of a lovely logo design. Now the concept is clear let’s get to sketching iterations.

Somehow from the very beginning I was determined to add a stone to this piece. Hence, the whole design process was revolving around cabochon selection. The initial choice was a beautiful carnelian pointy oval stone I though would fit the concept.

However, it was looking a bit too formal while it was supposed to have some romantic flavour. After few dozen messages back and forth about design options we got to a consensus – curvy trident with a heart shape inside and a smaller aventurine cabochon. Similar to the one I used in this project.

Soldering

Now it is the time to select a wire for this pendant. With my first design iterations I was sure that square wire would be perfect for this piece. Since the concept drifted somewhat to a more elegant shape I changed my mind in favour of a round 0.8mm silver 930 wire.

In the video further below you can watch the whole wire bending process. I have started with the heart of this pendant – the heart shaped frame. It was crucial to get this one right as any flaw in its shape would mess up the entire arrangement. Then I added all the adjacent element and consequently soldered them together. You can see the black marks on the side elements helping me to position them evenly.

The bottom part was a particular challenge as I wanted to achieve this delicate fusion effect, emphasising the accent on a heart-shaped frame in the center. In order to do that properly I firstly soldered all the other joints with a little help of a steel wires to keep all the elements on their places. Intentionally I left the two last wires at the bottom loosen for post processing.

Filigreeing

After fine filing and sanding the wireframe looks good and it’s ready for some filigree touch. Even though filigree filament looks gorgeous in jewellery I decided to keep the heart shape empty to put an accent on it. So I fililigreed (it’s not a real word – I made that up) the central opening and both side loops and I’m pretty happy with the result.

Filling the central opening has one more purpose – it will help to keep the cabochon firmly in place. For the fragile looking pendant the prongs stone setting seems to be the perfect option. I attached four prongs to the central loop making them a bit too long and too tight for my stone. It gives me a chance to set it more precisely by sanding off tiny layers of prong’s metal.

Once prongs are soldered and filed to a final shape the whole piece takes an acid bath. This process removes most of the flux and burn residue making silver prepared for polishing. First round of polishing I usually do before the stone setting to make sure that internal surfaces look good as well (not that anyone will ever look there, but still). And the final touch is to make it all shine with buff brushes using polishing paste with different grain sizes after the stone sits on its throne.

Completion

I must admit this was a very satisfying project with a very nice outcome I am truly proud of. I do hope that this pendant will bring some positive emotions to my friend and his lovely wife. Enjoy the video!

Unfortunately, this item is not available for purchase. If you dream about something similar, please check my Etsy store or contact me through the form or on Instagram and let’s see what I can do 🙂