Chain and Chain Maille Books

Chain Mail is fascinating as a wire jewelry technique and an extremely easy entry point for new wire jewelers. Most of us are familiar with chain maille as used in protective vests for knights. Did you know it was also used by Victorian kitchen maids to clean pots? Fascinating. In any event, chain mail eventually evolved as a very viable technique for jewelry making. Using patterns for interconnecting small wire circles, or links, chain mail is one of the more linear wire jewelry techniques.......as such, it provides a method, nearly fool proof, for easily making this gorgeous, appealing type of wire jewelry.

Making chains, the process of creating wire links in different sizes and shapes and then inserting one into the other,  can be a very enjoyable pursuit for the wire jewelry artist. While some might consider this repetitive process tedious, to those of us addicted to wire, we know that part of the secret beauty of working with wire is that it is contemplative, centering and soothing.
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