Introducing the Goldsmith Behind Delicate Hammer Studio, Louise Partain.
Hello there! Thank you so much for spending a few moments getting to know me a little better. My name is Louise Partain, the designer and goldsmith of Delicate Hammer Studio.
An Early Beginning
The story of how I became a goldsmith started at my 9th birthday party at the Bead Merchant in my hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma. I visited the Bead Merchant a lot after that, always rummaging around the tiny dishes laid all over the shop, peering up at the strings of beads hanging from the ceiling and wishing I had a larger allowance to buy everything! The owner of the shop was very encouraging, inviting me to sit down at their large work table in the center of the store, teaching me a few techniques. I learned to play with color, varying shapes, composition, and movement. This began a tradition of gifting the women in my family with something I had made every Christmas. At the time, I had no idea I would become a jeweler. It was just something fun to do.
When I was 12 we moved about 30 miles outside of Tulsa and my passion switched to riding horses and playing the saxophone. I tinkered here and there with mosaics and other crafts, but I don’t remember doing much with beads during those years. After my high school graduation I started college at the University of Kansas (KU) in Lawrence studying music. Things went really well at first, but into the second semester of my sophomore year, I realized that the path I was on wasn’t what I expected and a change was needed. Coincidentally, I had picked up my beads again during that year’s winter break to make Christmas gifts and took the beads back to school with me in Spring. I kept getting distracted making jewelry and avoided practicing….
“The first time I picked up a torch was the last time I strung beads.”
The Path Down a New Road
That summer I started exploring other options at school and found that there was a degree program for Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing?! “Wait, What?!” I told my parents, who surprisingly were upset about me giving up the music path. Most parents would have been delighted that I was looking to make a living outside of being a professional musician, but my parents had supported and watched me grow into a pretty good saxophone player. The transition was easy because as a music major I was already in the School of Fine Arts.
I’ll never forget the first time I stepped into the metals studio and saw the equipment we would be using. I’m not sure why, but I just thought we would be stringing beads. I had no idea what was involved with making legitimate, handcrafted jewelry from raw materials. The first time I picked up a torch was the last time I strung beads. However, ironically enough, the first project we made was a bead out of metal. A Bachelor of Fine Art in Metalsmithing gave me an introduction to a range of techniques including basic jewelry construction, casting, enameling, basic stone setting, etc. I learned so much while I was in school, but I had no concept of just how much there was to learn in the field and quickly found out that I had only scratched the surface.
Just Scratching the Surface
After graduating, I felt sort of lost without the full studio of equipment and the community of classmates surrounding me. I slowly acquired the necessities to work at home and started to think more about wearable jewelry that was more accessible to the wearer. I started to sell at art fairs after making some fun and simple copper pieces I sawed and enameled. The next year I played with fabrics, upholstering little jewelry pillows, an homage to my family’s closed furniture business. The year after that I tried incorporating fabric in a different way by printing lace into metals and designing around the resulting textures. It seemed like my whole aesthetic changed every year!
Recognizing the work I had been making was a bit limiting due to my lack of equipment and skillsets, I started looking for a job as a bench jeweler—something my younger, ego-motivated self never would have imagined doing—landing the perfect gig at Jewelry by Design (JBD) in Kansas City with two alumni as mentors, Phillip Voetsch and Kent Haub! Maybe I’ll do a blog post dedicated just to these two incredible teachers, but for now, I’ll just say that the last five years at the bench have been the most transformative.
“I had no idea how important that first garden would be in my personal growth... I started to see beauty in things that I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed.”
A New Inspiration Blooms
Foraging for remnants of plants while walking the dogs.
The spring after I started working at JBD I also started my first veggie garden! My husband and I love to cook and we are fortunate to live in North Lawrence where the soil is the envy of all gardeners in the area (being KAW River bottom), the ideal composition for growth. I had no idea how important that first garden would be in my personal growth. Caring for the garden gave me a daily opportunity to be present, still, and observe the natural environment around me. I started to see beauty in things that I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. As the Fall set in that year I was sad to put the garden to bed for the winter, but in doing so started to notice seed pods on plants everywhere I went. I realized that seed pods were sometimes just as beautiful as the blooms on the plant when it was thriving. I also started to collect remnants of plants giving way to fall on dog walks through a trail of tall grass nearby and began experimenting with organic casting.
When it started, nature casting was just for fun, an experiment that would maybe lead to a more sculptural art piece. Most of the things I was casting at first were very spikey and sharp, definitely not suited for jewelry. My experiments were not always successful either. I’d say 50 % of my nature casting resulted in something totally unusable, but I kept at it and continued to keep my eye out for interesting forms in my environment. A couple of friends of mine started to look for me too!
When I get a piece that works and seems like it could be an element for a jewelry piece, it will often sit at my bench for months before I design something with it, but other times I have a design in mind as soon as the flask is quenched.
Pictured below are some of my early attempts at nature casting. On the left are items collected on the trail near my house and on the right are some fun seedpods I found on a walk at Loose Park in Kansas City. I’ve been collecting and casting objects around me for a few years now and I think I found a technique and aesthetic that resonates and allows me to connect to the work and to you through the environment that we all share. It’s a collaboration with mother nature. Growing plants has helped me to become more grounded and connected to my environment. My work with plants/gardening has informed this new work, helped me consider my impact on the environment and make the best choices I can in my field to keep that impact low. In turn, I hope to be a positive influence on others in my field.
One of the things we say at JBD often is, “If you don’t know jewelry, know your jeweler.” I hope you’ve gotten to know me a little better here and I’d love to know more about you! Reach out if you have any questions and follow me on Instagram to stay up to date with new designs, my inspiration, and the process to make.
