Working with Precious Metal Clay

Precious Metal Clay has only been available in the United States for about 15 years now.  Even now, it is a medium that not many people know about or know how to work with.

I was lucky that I happened upon PMC almost 13 years ago.  I was taught by one of the first certified PMC instructors in Cleveland, Ohio. At the time, I had just started making jewelry, primarily out of silver and stone beads.  I had become dissatisfied with the available beads and wanted to make my own.  Another teacher suggested that I try making beads with PMC.  I took my first class and I was hooked.

Precious Metal Clay was developed by Mitsubishi Corporation as an offshoot of another manufacturing process. Once they saw how interested artists were in the material they began making different forms of PMC.

Currently, there is PMC standard--the original form of PMC, PMC+, and PMC3.

PMC standard comes both in silver and gold, but it has drawbacks because it shrinks 50% when fired and takes two hours to fire.  PMC+ was developed to correct those problems. PMC+ only shrinks about 10% when fired and can be fired in about 1/2 hour from start to finish.

When artists started asking for a lower temperature and slower firing PMC in order to incorporate fused glass, Mitsubishi developed PMC3.  PMC3 can be fired in a hot pot or with torch, as well as in a kiln with fused glass.

Nowadays, a hobbyist can make Precious Metal Clay pieces at home with PMC3 and a few inexpensive tools and a hotpot or a torch.  For more information on why I like to work with PMC, read The Top 10 Reasons that I Love to Work with PMC .