Ron McCoy, Editor of the Prodigy Antiques & Collecting Newsletter, was nice enough to write an article about Wing Tips and my jewelry making efforts. I couldn't help but share it with you here...

JEWELRY FROM "WOUNDED SOLDIER" DINNERWARE

by Ron McCoy [njaa32c@prodigy.com]

As collectors of Red Wing Pottery, the parents of Byron Bush [ByronBush@RedWingNet.com] had boxes of chipped & cracked dinnerware in their basement. They didn’t want to keep it, but didn’t want to throw it away either. His mom suggested that Byron try his hand at making jewelry out of the pieces.

"I experimented with different ways of cutting the dinnerware up to extract the hand painted items," Byron said. "I started with diamond-tipped tools and eventually graduated to what I use today, a bench grinder."

The early Red Wing items were very crudely cut and had very inexpensive hardware. Although he didn’t try to sell any, his mom displayed them and they raised quite a few eye brows at the 1996 RWCS convention in Red Wing, MN.

"I really didn’t find my original quick-and-dirty method of jewelry making very pleasing," Byron said. "I had all this wonderful, handpainted pottery and was not doing it justice by mounting it on a cheap pin or ear ring; so I took a silver and gold smithing class."

"After the second of five classes, I had a complete jewelry making shop in my garage. I knew I was doing something right when the women in my class were offering to buy my Red Wing jewelry as it came of the polishing wheel."

To date he’s made jewelry only from Red Wing (his primary collecting interest) because the 60+ hand painted dinnerware patterns produced by Red Wing lend themselves well to the media. His current jewelry is all Sterling Silver but he can work in gold.

"I currently have around 250 pieces of chipped & cracked (wounded soldier) Red Wing dinnerware that can be used for my efforts," he said. "I’m quite willing to diversify into other manufacturers if someone has a piece they would send along with a basic design of what they wanted me to make."

Byron currently only takes special orders but he does have some items left from the 1997 Red Wing Convention. You can see a sampling of the jewelry at his Wing Tips web site: [http://www.RedWingNet. com/index.html] Click on JEWELRY. If you have an interest in Red Wing Pottery, you’ll also want to spend some time on his extensive and popular Wing Tips home page.

The Prodigy Newsletter comes out every month and is packed with many interesting articles for the Antique collector.

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