Take A Seat Collection

Tantasqua Regional High School, MA — January, 2024

During my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to collaborate with our jewelry professor to create a miniature furniture collection—chairs and couches crafted with the same attention to detail typically reserved for wearable pieces. Working at scales of 3–4 inches long, I translated traditional jewelry techniques to small-scale furniture, exploring soldering, forming, decorating, enameling, and cloisonné.

Soldering provided the structural backbone, allowing me to join tiny metal components into stable frames. Forming involved shaping metal sheets and wires into legs, backs, and armrests; this required delicate hammering and precision bending to keep proportions accurate at a miniature scale. Decorating gave each piece character: surface texture, engraved patterns, and selectively applied patinas suggested upholstery or carved wood. Enameling introduced color and gloss. Applying powdered glass and firing it in small sections allowed for smooth, vibrant surfaces. Cloisonné enabled me to create crisp, separated color fields—thin metal strips formed the compartments, which I filled with enamel to simulate patterned fabrics or inlaid details.

Challenges included maintaining structural integrity without adding bulk, controlling heat during enameling to prevent warping, and achieving consistent scale and balance across the collection. The work sharpened my patience and fine-motor skills, and it expanded my understanding of material behavior at small sizes.

The finished series captured a dialogue between jewelry craftsmanship and furniture design: miniature seating pieces that read like wearable objects scaled down into domestic forms. Each chair and couch combined technique-driven construction with decorative finishes, demonstrating how traditional metalworking and enameling methods can be reinterpreted beyond jewelry to create detailed, collectible furnishings.