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By February, 1952, Shlaes was making $200 a month in his spare time business of creating handcrafted jewelry of copper and silver. He is employed full-time as a newspaperman on the Wall Street Journal during the day, and he gives only a few hours, evenings, to his art craft, together with Saturdays and part of Sundays. His wife is also employed full time as public relations director for the Girl Scouts of Chicago, but she helps with such details as keeping records and lacquering finished pieces.

The strange part of the whole thing is that Shlaes never made that originally intended pair of earrings, although he was certain that he could copy the design—drop earrings formed of twisted wire—and that he had figured out all the necessary steps.

Besides the hobbyist's copper he possessed two hammers used in such craft work. One of these is the planishing hammer costing $2, used for shaping and curving metal and producing the hammered effect. The other is the ordinary chasing hammer, found in every housewife's kitchen tools. He also had the necessary wooden handled, point scriber, for tracing and cutting designs on metal, which costs 50 cents; and a chunk of mild steel, which he'd bought in a junk shop for 35 cents, to be used as an anvil.

He invested in two earring backs, costing 10 cents at a hobby shop, and some copper wire for a few cents more.

With this equipment, Shlaes set to work to duplicate his wife's earrings. "I spent one whole evening trying to produce them," he recalls "and failed miserably."

However, when he gave the attempt up, that night, he was not at all discouraged. Several ideas for original designs of his own had come to him while he ruined a few tiny pieces of copper, and he had decided how to go about carrying them out. He got a list of books from the library on the making of modern jewelry. He recommends to the beginner, "How To Make Modern Jewelry," by the staff members of the Museum of Modern Art; "Jewelry Making for Fun and Profit," by Helen Clegg, and "Creating Jewelry for Fun and Profit," by Andrew Dragunas.

Shlaes bought a jeweler's saw for $1.50 with blades at 50 cents a dozen; a charcoal block for $2.50; a soldering iron for 98 cents; a sheet of cork, 50 cents, purchasable at any hobby shop; a 15-cent asbestos stove pad; a block of wood about three inches thick, with a V cut in one end, for clamping to a work bench, and inexpensive sandpaper of a fine quality. He made some tools for producing the hammered effect from various diameter bolts by cutting off the heads with a file. These transformed bolts are called dapping tools.

Shlaes's workshop is the small kitchen table in his kitchenette apartment. "The best place, of course," he says, "would be a basement or garage workshop with a workbench."

AT THE start, Shlaes could turn out perfect sets of earrings with less than ten dollars' worth of equipment, though he added the tinsnips-scissors for cutting wire, from which handmade "jump rings" for attaching the two parts of dangle earrings are made. The tinsnips cost under $5.

At first he made the earrings just for his wife. Then, Mrs. Shlaes thought, them good enough to give as presents. When he began to sell them, about two months after making his first pair, he needed other tools.

He now has an acetylene torch, which cost $27 at a welders' supply house; an electric buffing lathe, bought second hand for $10; and an electric one-quarter-inch drill, to bore the holes in some of the pieces, which cost $20. These tools were bought within a couple of weeks, and Shlaes showed a profit while buying them out of the proceeds of his jewelry crafting business.

Shlaes turns out a wide variety of pieces of costume jewelry—bracelets, necklaces, pins, and pendants in jewelry for women, and cuff links and tie bars for men. He furnishes about forty-three designs.

His prices range from $3 for a pair of copper earrings, etched with a geometric design, to $30 for a sterling silver necklace in a "saber tooth" design of modified rectangular links. Bracelets are priced from $8 to $20; pendants and pins, $8 to $10; cuff links, $6 to $18; tie bars, $6 to $8. Earrings may retail as high as $7.50; necklaces start at $10.

These retail prices are determined by the metal used, the elaborateness of the design, and the length of time needed in creating a piece. Shlaes works in copper, silver, and copper with silver. He began using silver five months after he started his craft.

For the beginning hobbyist in copper objects other than jewelry; there are kits priced at about $5. Any number of large planters, bowls, and decorative pieces can be created from the four sheets of copper included. Some beginners' tools are also included in the kit, of course, and they are used in jewelry-making of the kind Shlaes does so well. The number of small jewelry pieces one might make from a sheet of copper is hardly calculable.

WHEREAS IN the beginning Shlaes bought copper at $1 a pound from hobby shops and silver at $1.06 an ounce from jewelers' supply houses, he now buys copper at 77 cents and silver at 97 cents, buying from fabricators' suppliers, at wholesale prices. Silver wire costs him $1.35 an ounce. "And millions of jump-rings may be made from an ounce," says Shlaes. Silver solder comes in sheets, smaller in size than copper and silver, which measure about 16 by 12 inches a sheet. He uses copper in 18-, 20- and 22-gauge; silver in 20- and 22-gauge. The gauge used is whatever seems suitable to a particular piece of jewelry. A pin or pendant would be thicker than a necklace, for instance, and so would a tie bar or cuff link. Shim brass, for making master patterns, also is needed, and it costs 50 cents a sheet.

Shlaes buys the best findings for his jewelry. They range in cost, depending upon materials. Earring backs start at 3 cents; a sterling silver chain for his necklaces will be over $1.

Among Shlaes's designs there are innumerable variations of geometric lines either indented on plain metal or appliques of wire; and four basic shapes—oval, square, round and triangular—for earrings and separate links, or parts, in bracelets and necklaces. Besides these, he has designed a cat's face of copper with silver wire whiskers; a copper pin and pendant with an appliqued deer; an artist's palette with silver dots for paint pans; and a flying bird with silver wire beak and feet.

IN CREATING his pieces, Shlaes first of all sketches the design or shape outline—or both as the case may be—the exact size of the pattern to be transferred. An earring with two parts would be about ½ inch across the widest and longest part of the top and an inch for the lower, dangling part. Pins and pendants are large in comparison—perhaps as much as two inches long and across.

For the earrings he follows these steps:

After drawing the outline of the chosen shape, he traces it on the master pattern with the scriber on the shim brass. He then cuts out the master pattern with jeweler's saw and tinsnips. Eighteen-gauge copper is used for the earring. Having clamped the block of wood to the table, he puts the copper on it, holding it in place with hand and fingers, so that it won't be scratched or marred, with the pattern also held in place. The scribing is completed around the outline of the pattern. Then the cutting is done. If it is a pair of hammered copper or silver earrings, this effect is achieved by placing the metal on the anvil, and tapping with the planishing hammer until the artist is satisfied with the dimpled appearance.

The jump rings may be soldered to each part of the bangle earring or run through holes bored by one of the drills, connecting upper and lower parts of the drop earring. Shlaes cuts about one-half inch of wire for the ring.

Next the earring and the findings, the screw back, are soldered together. Shlaes uses his acetylene torch for some soldering. He places the asbestos stove pad on the table, the charcoal block on the pad, and the earring, right side down, on the block. With a bit of solder and the screw back in place on the earring, the torch is touched to the object. The solder melts, flows into the joint, and the bond is thus formed.

In soldering, the whole piece has been heated red hot, thus forming a scale caused by oxidation of copper when heated. This must be removed for the metal to take a polish. The piece is thrown into a pickle bath for this purpose—a solution of sulphuric acid diluted fifteen-to-one with water, first having been cooled in a bowl of cold water a few seconds.

The polishing is done on the electric buffing lathe, and the lacquer is brushed on with a good sable brush, suited in size. Lacquering takes the longest of the whole process. The earrings took about forty-five minutes to create. The lacquer takes forty-eight hours to dry. Shlaes hangs his pieces on a rack for this stage of the work.

Resourceful in everything, he has bent coat hangers into racks. Pieces such as pendants, having holes in them, are hooked onto one end of an open paper clip and the clip is hooked over the rack.

When designs are indented on metal the indentations are produced by the carborundum wheel of the buffing lathe. This is only one of many ways in which such indentations can be etched on the copper.

FOR JOINING the beak and feet to his bird pin or soldering raised wire on the metals, the method, which is called brazing, is as follows:

After the piece has been cut out as described and other necessary work has been done, the final steps are the adding of the silver wire. The wire has been cut and bent to the proper length and into the design to be appliqued (raised effect). Next, tiny flecks of silver solder are cut with the tinsnips out of the sheet, falling into a plastic or porcelain cup or a glass as they are cut.

With a small brush dampened with flux, a borax solution which keeps the metal clean, the solder is picked up and placed where the jointing or the design—as the case may be—is to go. The acetylene torch is touched to the solder and the bond is completed.

The bird pin, an extremely effective modern design, resembling primitive art, is fashioned in this way: It is in one piece in outline, but has wings, curved above the body on one side and below, on the opposite. To make the wings curve or be raised from the body of the bird, the one-quarter-inch dapping tool, cut from a bolt, is used. The bird is placed on the anvil with a sheet of cork between, and dapped on one wing until enough curve of the wing is achieved to suit the artist. It is then turned over and the other wing is curved or raised above the body, the dapping tool being tapped with the chasing hammer until the desired curve is achieved.

Then the silver wire beak and feet are ready to be joined to head and body. They are made of three-eighth-inch diameter circles, open, one for the beak and one, only, for the feet. The curve of the open circle is held to the body at the proper place for beak or feet and the silver solder is applied, as described previously. After the necessary pickle, the indentations simulating feathers are ground in with the carborundum wheel, the pin back is soldered on, pickle process gone through again, and the piece is polished and lacquered. This piece retails for $8. It takes two hours of work.

In appliqueing, black background is often desired, as behind the silver wire whiskers of the cat's face, or around raised geometric designs. To get this effect, liver of sulphur is used. It comes in lumps, sold at any drug store, and dissolves easily in water. The whole piece of jewelry is plunged into the liver of sulphur solution, and turns black. It is then polished on the buffing lathe to remove all but the black area wanted. After polishing, the artist lacquers it.

The links of Shlaes' bracelets are hinged together. The hinges are made of wire the length of the link, run through the handmade jump rings on each side of the link. All are soldered together. His necklaces are fastened by jump rings only.

FRIENDS SUGGESTED that Shlaes take his jewelry to art and gift shops and try to sell it. They were certain that it would be as enthusiastically received by store proprietors as by themselves, but Shlaes wasn't so sure, much as he enjoyed creating it.

However, he and his wife went to one of these shops to purchase something for a gift and incidentally to introduce the subject of selling Shlaes' jewelry. While Shlaes was "looking around," the proprietor asked Edythe who had made her unusual and attractive earrings. She answered, "My husband." The proprietor immediately asked Shlaes to bring her some of the jewelry as samples from which she could select for selling.

"I sat up all night, cutting, hammering, polishing, and lacquering," recalls Shlaes. "I made four pairs from which I thought she'd choose—triangle, square, oval and tear-drop and circle. And as soon as they were dry, I delivered them. She bought all four pairs for $8. They had cost me a dime's worth of copper, about 50 cents in materials and six hours of work."

After that he took samples to other shops until he had ten customers, all of whom now give repeat orders. Two are specialty stores located in the nearby towns of Evanston and Winnetka, Illinois, where each has exclusive rights in the town to sell jewelry "Handmade by Seymour"—the name Shlaes and his wife have given his work. The other eight stores are located in various Chicago neighborhoods, where the simple, arresting beauty of his designs has great appeal. One of these stores is located in Chicago's famous loop.

University towns are good locations for selling such jewelry, for college students all are pleased with it.

"Simplicity in design is my keynote," says Shlaes, "and this kind of jewelry is very much in favor with many people who have a well developed taste for modern design. It has a great resemblance to the primitive. The more modern your design, the closer to the primitive art forms you seem to get."

Mrs. Shlaes wears her husband's jewelry at her work. This in itself is advertising, for she meets a wide variety of potential purchasers. When a big Girl Scout campaign is in progress, she meets business and industrial executives, political bigwigs, teachers, writers, and so on. Almost everyone exclaims over the originality and eye-appeal of her jewelry. She can only tell these people where the things can be bought, for repeat orders and special, single orders from the shops through which he sells keep Shlaes too busy to make jewelry for individuals.

"I haven't needed to package my work," says Shlaes. He simply fills a cardboard candy or shoe box with the jewelry and takes it to the customer as ordered. Although it is known by the name, "Handmade by Seymour," this name is not in evidence. Therefore, in order to protect his rights, Shlaes stamps the under side of each piece with an "S".