Electroforming in Pforzheim

Electroforming is truly my new  favourite technique! I was introduced to this technique in my few months as exchange student at Pforzheim design school in Germany.  I collected anything I could find with an interesting shape to cover with metal. Basically electroforming is covering an object with metal by chemical reaction. First you have to make your object conductive by covering it with different materials and then you place it in big baths where it is covered with copper. This process takes hours. We had to leave our objects in the baths over night. I was always too excited to get back to class the next day to see how my objects have grown.

When I got back from Germany, I was lucky enough to have a dad that could build me my own electroforming machine. It wasn’t easy figuring out the machine and chemicals, but in the end we managed to build a decent diy prototype. The experimenting still continues until today as it is quite a temperamental technique. You never really know what is going to come out of the other side. Here are some pics of experiments I did in Germany as well as on my own machine.

Seeds being prepared for electroforming

Electroformed Seed Ring

Silver Electroformed Seed Ring

Electroformed Lace

Electroformed Chilli

Copper Electroformed Ring

Electroformed Leaves

Silver Electroformed Leaf Pendant

Silver Electroformed Rose Thorn Twig Pendant

Stay tuned for some more final pieces coming soon..