I began to use wax build-up techniques in the 1960s when I was a Dental laboratory technician. I was trained to make gold crowns and bridges for Dentists, a process which begins with accurate stone model-making from impressions taken in the mouth by the Dentist. Pouring velmix or cast-stone exact models of the patient's prepped tooth enables the lab technician to duplicate the prepped tooth from impressions provided by the Dentist and allows a subsequent wax modeling technique to create the proper model for the restoration of the patient's tooth as a gold crown. The wax carving creates the model which is then cast into gold and finally finished with metal-working techniques to provide the Dentist a suitable crown to mount in the patient's mouth. A bacteria-free seal is necessary in the fit of the new crown onto the patient's prepared tooth, so a highly-technical casting procedure is required.

Eventually, by the mid-1970s, I became interested in merging dental wax model techniques with the infinite possibilities of jewelry design. The wax tool pictured below is a Peter K. Thomas wax placer. This tool is used in a build-up technique. The tip of the tool is heated or warmed to desired temperature over (in my system) an alcohol-burning wick lamp. When properly heated, the tool is touched to the wax supply and in doing so it heats a globule of melted wax which will adhere to the hot tip of the tool. While that globule of molten wax adheres to the wax placer's tip, the tip is quickly moved to one's wax model, where it is added by touch to the existing bulk of the design. The droplet of melted wax is added to the model by bonding with the heated tip of the tool. Again and again, a droplet of melted wax is applied to build up the general form of the intended design. The design is literally built "one drop of wax at a time". This technique and process is tedious and time-consuming, yet in an unexpected way it renders an escape from time by taking time. All designs featured in this Gallery section have been sold and reside in private collections.

She was cast in 18 Karat yellow gold, held a five-pointed-star-cut E/VS diamond
from Crown Diamonds in Atlanta, finally received a platinum halo set ‘round
with tiny princess-cut diamonds.

Her hair descended over the backside of the pearl in the dip between the
pearl’s two upper peaks and was used behind the pearl to set her permanently.

She has a combination pearl-enhancer / bail, a signature plate, and a brooch-pin system on the backside of the pearl, all arranged with her hair. She is worn now
on a strand of 15 mm South Sea pearls.