NOVA is a hand forged bronze anti-clastic bangle with 24k Rose Gold plating I created in 2012 in my Miami, FL studio. The name Nova is from the astronomical phenomenon that inspired it’s form.
4 years later, I decided to learn Blender 3D by recreating the piece in 3D, down to the exact specifications of the original, a complex task for a new user at the time.
This piece remains a favorite of mine because at that time the difficulty level of creating this piece by hand should have been beyond my skills. I had years of experience in jewelry fabrication during college, but soldering TWENTY different joints in a single piece that would later be hammered into shape is rather tricky.
I had to forge the piece on a bracelet mandrel after it was assembled in order to achieve the anti-clastic shape. Forging soldered bronze joints should have cracked at least one joint, but with a lot of patience and care I found way.
“an·ti·clas·tic. : having opposite curvatures at a given point. specifically : curved convexly along a longitudinal plane section and concavely along the perpendicular section. ”
Recreating this piece precisely in a 3D program that I had only just begun to learn seemed equally difficult, but I had some experience with 3D modeling through Sketchup. I also happened to keep the original vellum paper pattern for all the little pieces.
In the end, despite the somewhat clunky UI Blender had in 2012, I was able to reproduce the piece surprisingly well.