Recently I had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time in the home studio of the second generation Master Silversmith, Stephan Grief, who lives just south of Dresden in the small town of Pillnitz. I had contacted him while still in Ohio in the hopes of meeting him and somehow talking my way into a quick visit of his studio. I didn't quite realize then how fortuitous this would be. After a few vaguely confusing email exchanges back and forth we managed to work through our lack of a common language and arranged a visit. So with Iduna, my host, and Patrice from the jewelry studio, we set off. To our great pleasure we met a delightfully friendly and accommodating man, as well as an incredibly skillful artisan.
Stephan learned the trade from his father, sitting across from him at a homemade jewelry station the top of which his father had cut out of a single tree. He then went on for further education in Würzburg where he took his Masters Examination in 1996. Working mostly on the repairing, replacing, and renovating bits of ancient liturgical wares and expensive holloware (as well as creating some of his own design when he has the time) he brings his careful attention to whatever the public brings to him. He has worked on pieces for most of the local churches and is called upon regularly to tend to the priceless items of the Grüne Gewölbe, the renowned "Green Vault" collection here in Dresden.
The studio is dark, tight, dusty, and happily disheveled. Tools and projects are scattered about or stacked high to the ceiling. It has the patina of time. You can tell a lot of good work is getting done. Set up for every and all metalworking procedures.... casting, making ingots, gold plating, metal spinning, buffing and polishing, the studio is a virtual museum of metalworking tools and practices.
Across the back of the wall behind his bench hangs dozens of viciously razor sharp metal scrapers used for polishing the inside of vessels. In a heavy wooden crate are kept hundreds of chasing tools. A small smelting furnace that can be attached to the main gas line for the house is propped against a corner. He brought it out and fired it up for us. And a fascinating set of about three dozen, long wooden wands with carefully shaped and smoothed Hematite tips used to polish pieces from the "Green Vault" is brought out for us to admire.
An interesting aspect of the tool collection was that his set of hammers, though quite extensive and containing some rare examples, was nothing compared to his stake and mandrel collection which easily consisted of several hundred homemade pieces. I have always said that metalworking is all about the hammer.... I stand corrected. Many more tools remain to be found I'm sure, but in the three short hours we were there these were some of the most notable ones out of the many he kept pulling out from the recesses of the studio.
Scattered about the studio or secreted away amongst the piles are several half finished projects (mostly beautiful litergical pieces waiting for the next payment installment from churches begging poverty), plus an impressive silver champaign bucket beautifully chased with a scene of cavorting puttis that needed a major dent hammered out.
Also are amazing finished pieces by him and his father as well as past Master Examination pieces form his father's former students, such as small yet exquisitely worked chalice, a large sterling lidded vessel with it's own velvet lined box, and an delightful reproduction of a whimsical royal toy windmill with vanes that magically spin when you blow into a tube.
As the visit progressed Patrice helpfully piped up that I have been working on making silver utensils and was having a little trouble with my ingots. They seemed to be developing microscopic flaws, odd pits, and possibly cracks of indeterminate depth when I stated working with them. Things that can all cause major problems later on and might make them unusable. She told me to show them to Stephan so I shamefully took them from my bag where I had hoped they would stay hidden. Everyone consulted each other, knitting their brow and fretting over the sad little things I had previously been so proud of. With this Stephan pulled a random box off the shelf and opened it to show us an assortment of big and sassy silver ingots, several unfinished spoon projects by Stephan, and a beautiful Art Nouveau style piece by his father. I quietly slid my ingots out of view.
After oohing and aahing over the set and asking as many questions as I could think of about my own ingots and what problems might possibly come up while I was working with them, he nonchalantly handed me a hefty ingot of sterling, a chisel and three forging hammers and told me to cut off a chunk when I get back to my studio, then let him know when would be a good time for me to come back to start working on a project with his supervision. Well I was stunned. My mind immediately started racing through all the issues of negotiating the travel arrangements, repacking all my tools, and finagling my schedule before I realized I might be staring gaped mouth and managed to quickly stammer out "Yes! That would be very nice!! Thank you very much!!!". Well this was more than I could have imagined, and of course immensely exciting (as well as somewhat intimidating), but an opportunity I couldn't miss out on.
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