Guillocheuse Extraordinaire Americaine! Merveilleuse!
Meet Calina Shevlin, guillocheuse extraordinaire! Now living in the Geneva area of Switzerland, Callie is an American educated and trained guillocheuse or guillocheure, if you prefer.
Calina with her trusty microscope.
As a youngster, her mother took her to a museum where she saw for the first time vitreous enameled and guilloché objects and jewels made by Fabergé. This visit and the question of “how is that done?” resulted in a passion bordering on obsession that led her to learn the art from a master goldsmith and tool maker in the USA, G. Phil Poirier. This training happened during and in between her studies to earn a Masters Degree in Fine Arts (MFA) Metalsmithing and Jewelry.
Wanting to perfect her skills and to learn more, Calina bravely supplied sample pieces of her work in order to apply to a position at a prestigious Swiss watchmaker that specializes in guilloché. This move to the Vallée de Joux placed Calina straight into the heart of Swiss watchmaking and in the company of the legends of engine turning.
Martin Matthews, David Wood-Heath and Callie Shelvin in the Shop
Prior to leaving for Switzerland, Calina had begun writing a book on the history of guilloché. Her proximity to masters of the art, including Martin Matthews, and George Daniels, David Wood-Heath and so many others afforded her the ability to interview them. This book will finally become a reality and is currently in the publishing process, due out early 2015. It will be titled, “The Definitive History of Guilloché”. It is very exciting to see this book become a reality and it promises to be a comprehensive history of the art as well as a compendium of how to for engine turning.
Like so many who continue to practice engine turning, Calina Calina fears that, due to the increasing rarity of machines outside of museums, the very high prices for those machines that do become available, and the loss of masters to teach the art, it will be lost in the near future to those who would practice independently. It is for these reasons that she has written this book as well as to reach and give the knowledge to a wider audience. Calina has also begun to offer workshops to learn guilloché, with the first one scheduled for the last week of July 2015, in Taos, NM.
Calina can be found on LinkedIn and will be presenting and giving demonstrations at the Ornamental Turners International Biennial Symposium in Columbus, Ohio USA October 2-5, 2014. More information on the OTI Symposium and OTI membership can be found at: www.ornamentalturners.org . This is a robust organization and well worth investigation.
All Guilloché shown here is by Calina Shelvin.
Engine Turning 