Janos Gabor Varga
Timber ring

In this silver ring I set a piece of stainless steel patterweld ("damascus") steel bar. It's structure is insired by Chinese joinery. A key element is the 18 karat gold clamp. On one of the photos you can see as it was hammered into place. I etched the steel to bring out the texture given by the layers from which it was folded using two differet kind of steel. A knife maker friend of mine gave me some high quality, hard pattern weld steel that he forged.

Width of the silver ring: 8.5 mm
Weight: 14 gramms
Dimensions of the steel bar: 25.5 mm x 5 mm x 4.5 mm

I was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1976. I graduated as an agronomist in 2002. Until I lived in my country of origin, my passion was animal breeding and ethnography. I did a 10 years long research on the ethnomedicine of animals, involving wonderful, exciting journeys in Transylvania, Ukraine and the Hungarian countryside. The time I spent working with pheasants, shepherds made a deep impact on me: the wisdom of those people, the way they work materials, the way they face the life.
First of all I learnt: there are no „simple people”. We are all bloody complicated.
And... the most beautiful finish on metal is the one a shiny scythe has at the end of the summer.

Then I left Hungary for England where I lived for nearly 3 years, this is where I started to make jewellery. As I spoke very bad English, jewellery become the way of expressing myself.
Starting a new life I become a farm worker, later cheese maker.

Searching for my home I left England and I emigrated to Italy. Here I started again from the beginning, without the knowledge of the language, place. I worked for two years as a goat herd, forest worker when finally I managed to become a full time jeweller. I have my own workshop in a small village in the mountains near to Genoa.