The jewelry is designed and made by Geody Madden in Taos, New Mexico.
I became acquainted with Southwestern and Native American Jewelry in 1974 when our family moved to New Mexico. Friends were making Jewelry in Albuquerque based on Native American Jewelry from the Santo Domingo Pueblo.
My interest in making Jewelry was soon sparked by images in magazines especially the August 1974 Summer Jewelry Edition of Arizona Highways. I wanted to learn how to make Jewelry like those artists in that issue. I bought tools, books and material and began the process of learning Jewelry making. As my skills developed through experiment and working for companies my designs took another direction, putting me on the course I am today.
Everything, in one way or another influences design: nature, music, conversation, and where you’ve been. I am most influenced by what I had just been working on, sometimes a new technique might show itself or something like it’s shadow.
Occasionally in my jewelry making experience , a surprise occurs, the unexpected, and initially, unexplainable and unwanted. At first I blame myself, but often after further work there is another explanation that leads to a new understanding of the materials and process, and thus a new technique, leading to develop designs that fit that new technique.
The jewelry is jewelry is fabricated from raw material and formed metals as in sheet and wire, and I alloy the Gold. I use VS, F-G colored Natural Diamonds, and AAA colored stones or the finest I can find. I use non ferris metals: High Karat golds : 18K 22K and 24K and Sterling Silver, Red and Yellow Brass, Nickel Silver and Copper as appropriate.
Most of the techniques I use are standard: sawing, filling, bending, soldering, forging, sinking and stone setting, Anticlastic forming, Granulation, invisible setting. There are in addition Techniques developed in the studio: Controlled Oxidation on Brass, Carving metal while “Super Heating
“, primitive granulation and Eutectic Fusion, and Edge Soldering.