As a youth, I learned to bend and twist and hammer sterling silver. Sixty years later, I still do this, mostly in Autumn, outside, when the leaves are turning yellow and the mornings are cool and refreshing. I have a stump from an old Aspen tree into which I have embedded a steel anvil. Every year I re-polish that anvil to the smoothest face possible. To flatten and accent the silver earring designs I use a hardware-store ball pin hammer that I bought way back then. Every year I carefully polished that hammer to very, very smooth surface. That hammer is never used for anything else but for hammering silver, and that anvil does not ever have anything on it but sterling silver.

Hand hammered sterling silver earrings continue to come fresh off the anvil every year.     (Available)