Introducing Hershal Wiggins Designs: Jewellery & Watches Made in Argentium Sterling Silver
Hershal Wiggins is a highly talented jewellery and watch maker from Philadelphia, USA. Wiggins is famous for his Argentium silver faced watches and jewellery. All of Hershal Wiggins Designs silver work is composed of Argentium 970-Pure Silver with chains of made of Argentium 925 and Fine Silver.
Argentium Sterling Silver is a technologically advanced silver alloy containing the same silver content as traditional sterling silver. Traditional Sterling Silver is an alloy composed of 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. In the 1990’s, scientists discovered that if they replaced some of the traditional copper with Germanium, the resulting sterling silver alloy had distinctly advantageous properties.
Hershal Wiggins holds many academic qualifications and extensive practical knowledge in Jewelry and jewelry Design, Ancient Jewelry Technique (Byzantine), Enameling and Granulation, Photography and Film, and textiles.He was studied at prestigious institutes like Philadelphia University of the Art and Parson School of Design and had worked along with most elite artists and jewelers like Michael Bondanza, Gabriel Sanchez, Nathan Levy, Stuart Moore, Jane Bohan, Biba Schultz and Mario Salvucci.
His areas of interest include: Cold Joining, hot joining techniques, bending and shaping, box making, Hollowware, tableware, fabrication and alloying of gold, alloying of silver, specializing in Argentium sterling silver, forging, dapping, minor casting, reticulation, etching, appliqué, granulation, filigree, Kum Boo, Mokume’ Gane, inlay, stone setting, hinges, handmade chain making and modeling making.
As well as the basics of sanding, soldering cleaning up casting and polishing and all aspects on gold ( 14k to 24), silver (argentium, fine and sterling), palladium and platinum fabrication.
Hershal Wiggins is an expert in watch making too(quartz, mechanical, and chronographic) and clock making (quartz and mechanical). He uses to run production of the watch making department of Wings watches in New York. All Hershal Wiggins watches are handmade with Swiss made ETA movement. In 2009, Hershal Wiggins introduced a timepiece named Keum-Boo Watch.
Keum-Boo is a difficult technique of fusing pure gold onto Argentium (low-tarnish) Sterling Silver. The watch is a combination of 24 Karat pure gold and Argentium Sterling Silver and entirely handmade from case to texturing. Hershal Wiggins is currently working on his first Tourbillon watch movement which is expected to complete by the end of the year.
