Earrings

For those with ears to hear

I know I said I would have a video this week, but I don't. Next week.

When I first started tinkering with woodworking in late 2019, I quickly ended up with all sorts of cut-offs and scraps of wood that seemed too nice to burn or throw away. Earrings seemed like a perfect way to get the most out of those little bits.

My first several (dozen?) pairs were pretty simple. One of the popular styles I made was an obelisk shape, and then a mini-obelisk shape.

Another style was a simple rectangular block. My goal was to emphasize the beauty and character of the wood and grain through minimalistic design.

You can see in those last pictures that the metal stem goes down into the center of the wood via a drilled hole, as opposed to being attached by an O-ring that goes through a hole in the front of the piece, like this:

It takes quite a bit more work to do the drilling—which has to be very precise—and insert the stems, but I felt it was important to not compromise the composition of the earrings. The pure shapes and uninterrupted grain was the whole point, so I did it the hard way, ya know, for art and stuff.

My approach was meticulous and tedious. Most wooden earrings I have seen have a "natural" and "handmade" style, which is to say, not everything is perfectly straight, flat, smooth, round, or otherwise consistent. And there's nothing wrong with that. But my goal was the opposite. I wanted perfect lines, perfectly rounded corners, convincing compositional balance, and overall purity of design.

That meant carefully selecting individual pieces of wood to create a single pair of earrings. I had specific methods of holding the pieces while sanding, counting the number of strokes on each face, each edge, and each corner, to ensure everything was sanded consistently, and none of the corners or edges got rounded too much or too little. I did that all with 150 grit (sometimes), 220 grit, and 400 grit sandpapers. Each piece was then hand-finished with two coats of a wipe-on oil. Finally, each piece was hand-waxed and polished. It was a lot, but that's what it took to get what I wanted.

The more earrings I made, the more I realized I was practicing architecture on a micro scale. As I leaned into that, I began focusing on lines and volumes to create what I saw as tiny architectural models.

I don't make earrings anymore, but I look back on them with fondness and pride. There are still some of these for sale at YAAS Mercantile in Edinboro, PA. And if you really want a pair, I bet I could come up with something if you ask nicely. ; )