Reclaimed Precious Metal Jewelry by DeAnna Cochran – Stunningly Eco Friendly!

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing an amazing local artist, DeAnna Cochran, who specializes in crafting gold, silver and bronze jewelry. At first glance her jewelry is visually stunning and very unique but don’t be fooled by the pretty looks, there is a complex and very clever process that goes into making her artwork;

If you look a little deeper into the process behind DeAnna Cochran’s jewelry pieces you will uncover a fascinating story including recycled cell phones, recycled computers, Japanese scientists and a zero waste business model!

DeAnna is passionate about running her charity focused “Jewelry for a Cause” business and she tries to keep the business operating with a zero waste policy.

Simply, I love creating and more so I love that what I create holds a higher purpose of giving back and making a difference.

- DeAnna Cochran, Metalsmith and Artist

During my interview with DeAnna I could clearly hear the passion that she has for the “craft” involved in creating her jewelry, the part that fascinated me was that her jewelry is made with a Precious Metal Clay which uses re-claimed metals from scrap electronics! The Precious Metal Clay contains small particles of gold, silver or bronze and when it it freshly out of the packaging it is very soft and workable. DeAnna explained that PMC looks and works very much like a regular clay compound, it uses a water based binder and is completely non-toxic. DeAnna’s wonderful jewelry creations are full of fine details and she said that the PMC allows her to create these fine details with a high level of confidence in the final result.

Once DeAnna has finished her design the PMC can be fired or cured in a kiln. The PMC generally shrinks in size by approximately 10% due to the organic binders being burnt off. What is left behind is a wonderfully pure gold, silver or bronze piece of jewelry! DeAnna explained that she has enjoyed working recently with bronze, it is relatively new to the PMC line of products.

Needless to say, my curiosity was lit and I went off to do some research into Precious Metal Clay. Let’s start with some of the science… Did you know that all cell phones and computers, in fact pretty much anything with a circuit board, contains small amounts of silver, gold and other precious metals?

To quote Richard Alcorn from Finishing.com;

One ton (2000 lbs) of “average” circuit board from modern computers and electronics generally yields (in a very good system) between 8 and 11 troy ounces of 24k gold.

Given that the average desktop computer will generally have just a couple of  pounds of circuit board you would need alot of recycled computers to get even a small amount of gold, check out our visual representation below;

There is a scientific technique for removing these precious metals from discarded electronics and the first reaction that most amateur scientists, or computer boffins, have is to wonder if they too can get some gold or silver from their used electronics such as an old computer. Well the process is NOT easy! The extraction of precious metals from old circuit boards and electronic components involves many dangerous chemicals and should NOT be attempted by any of our readers. The amounts of precious metals in an individual computer or cell phone are also very, very small…

This gold is found in a number of places, including the plated gold wires and leads, on plated pins inside connectors and on the computer circuit boards as well as on and within the IC (integrated circuits) on the boards themselves. In addition, there will generally be around 10 to 20 times this amount in silver from the solder and other components. There are also minute amounts of palladium, platinum and other precious metals.  Interestingly, any of the older electronics and early computer equipment have much higher amounts of precious metals, while the newest (1997 and newer) are lower.

OK, now that the science is behind us, lets move on to the Precious Metal Clay!

In the 1990s scientists in Japan developed a combination of binders and metal particles to create a material with the working properties of modeling clay, known as Precious Metal Clay, or PMC.
An organic binder provides elasticity while holding very tiny grains of the precious metal in suspension. The artist can sculpt the PMC into jewelry and then “fire” the piece with heat. During heating, the binding material burns away, which causes the object to shrink slightly (10 – 20%).
The process is easiest with pure silver and pure gold because these precious metals fuse at relatively low temperatures (400 – 1000F).

Let’s take a quick graphical look at the journey taken by Precious Metal Clay over the last twenty years;

Darnall Burks, an engineer, Ronald Hayes Pearsona, a well-known jeweler and Tim McCreight, another American jeweler and teacher advised Mitsubishi on the viability of PMC in the United States. Together these three men organized a workshop for American artists which took place at the Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, Maine in May, 1995.

Since that first workshop the use of PMC in the United States has grown exponentially and artists like DeAnna Cochran have learned the best methods for creating beautiful pieces from this versatile material.

Here is a collection of our favorite DeAnna Cochran jewelry pieces;

DeAnna tries to run a paperless business and clients are often surprised when they meet with DeAnna as the laptop pops open to show them her collection as opposed to printed brochures etc, in fact DeAnna will not send out catalogs and even her business cards are printed on recycled paper. DeAnna also loves to recycle and always re-uses any unused materials for her next creation.

DeAnna Cochran’s use of Precious Metal Clay and the background of reclaimed precious metals has created a green foundation for her business and her target of having zero waste is truly admirable.

In the process of researching these recycled metals I discovered that the Texas Department of Public Safety actually tracks all metals that are officially recycled and we wanted to share some of the amazing figures for the amount of metal that is recycled in Texas alone;

I was amazed to see that in Texas alone we recycled over 121 millions lbs of Aluminum in a year! As for precious metals such as Bronze, the totals are far less but we still recycled over 150 thousand lbs of bronze in one year. It’s reassuring to know that eventually this reclaimed metal could end up in one of DeAnna Cochran’s stunning eco designs such as this one of a kind leaf cuff bracelet made from reclaimed fine silver with garnet and diamond stones;

We love that artists like DeAnna are using eco friendly materials like PMC to make such wonderful jewelry creations whilst maintaining green business practices. We would like to thank DeAnna for taking the time to talk to us about such a fascinating process. If you want to learn more about DeAnna Cochran jewelry please visit her site;

www.DeAnnaCochranJewelry.com