Necklace

Long time no posts. Well, the holiday season is about over and I finally have time to do other things than visit relatives etc. That's fine and all, but you get tired of it after a while.

This time I decided to make a necklace. Well, actually, I had to dismantle and redo the blasted thing so many times that probably it would be better to say that it turned out to be a necklace. The weave is called Japanese 3-1. The thing is about 43,5 cm long and weighs roughly 50 grams. Or in other words, a bit over 17 inches and roughly 1,76 ounces.


The necklace is made of 1 mm thick sterling silver wire. I used three different ring sizes. Most of the rings (about half) have an inner diameter of 3 mm. These rings are the connecting rings between larger rings. Half the rings in the inner chain is made of rings with 4 mm inner diameter. The outer chain and the hanging weave are made of 3 and 5 mm rings. The inner chain must be a bit shorter so that the necklace hangs nicely around the neck. You can easily see the difference in ringsizes in the second picture.

My previous work (the bracelet) uses the same weave as european mediaval chain mail. I read somewhere (but can't unfortunately remember where) that this weave has been used in japanese armour. If my memory serves me correctly, you could also hide this kind af weave between two layers of fabric making a comfortable and very unmaillike protective gear. But I must check that up.