Not ready for prime time teaching yet and other stuff

I postponed my first public teaching appearance at ChiChi, because as the tentative date drew closer I realized that without first testing my lesson on at least one person, how could I expect to do a good job teaching up to 8 people? It wouldn't be fair to the owners or the students to use a public venue as my first teaching engagement, I decided ,and we agreed to postpone it until a later date. In view of that I removed the post on the lesson, also reasoning that maybe I should try it out first before I go blogging all over the place about it. I plan to practice on friends and family first to test it and may well have to modify it.

On the subject of vintage jewelry, which I am now interested in, hand made, one of a kind jewelry was common during the period from 1890 to 1914, referred to as the"Arts and Crafts Era". During that time there was still a general distrust of factories and mass produced items, according to the article I read, and in view of that hand made jewelry was highly valued. It states that emphasis was placed on metals like brass and copper and semi-precious stones as opposed to precious were more widely used. What I found most interesting about that is that parallels with the present day movement towards artisan jewelry. Here, a century later, I am learning the techniques of creating hand made jewelry, just as artisans of the past were doing.

This leads me to wonder on the age of some of the pieces entrusted to me to redesign for ChiChi. So many pieces have evidence of hand made construction. The shots in this post will also show evidence of hand made construction. Now I want to find out about the metals used in these pieces too. To me it's so cool to know that 100 years ago others were using a hammer, anvil, and specialized tools and wire to make jewelry, quite possibly using many of the same techniques I am now learning.
The top photo shows hand twisted wire, and the one of the beautiful filagree beads beside shows the hand made links in a dark metal, I still haven't identified.