"Strange to say, but sometimes bad luck can force a change in direction that leads to good luck in big bunches. If a garage mechanic hadn't wrecked my truck in 1971, I wouldn't be doing Jewelry today...

My love of working with my hands is something I picked up from my father. As well, early in my life, my parents noticed I had an ability to do very delicate things, and they encouraged me, while suggesting I might one day become a surgeon. Many years later, after finally completing my pre-medical school studies, I decided that was not how I was meant to express this ability. I changed direction and tried photography, pottery, and then sculpture.

Right about here, is where an incompetent garage mechanic intervened to change my direction in life from sculpture to Jewelry-making. It was the winter of 1972, and I had brought my pickup truck in to a garage in Montreal for servicing. The mechanic didn't put the correct antifreeze mix in, and during a bitter cold spell, the engine block split. I was left with no means of transporting the large chunks of raw soapstone I needed for the sculptures I was doing then. I had little money - those were hard times - and no transportation.

Someone repaid a loan I had made with the smallest motorcycle known to man, a Kawasaki 90 cc. I lived 15 miles outside of the city, and delivered what work I could fit on this tiny motorcycle to places in Montreal. Things weren't going well, and I decided to rethink my situation. 'What can I make that's small, and sculptural, that I can create from materials I already have?' Soapstone, wood, bone and some shells were all I had to work with. Up to this point, I did not like Jewelry. However, I had recently seen a beautiful bone ring made by an Inuit, and that had given me an idea.

I had a bunch of bones I'd collected for a sculptural project that would have never fit on my motorcycle. So I scrapped that idea and considered using some of the bones to make miniature, portable sculptures - in other words - Jewelry.

Looking at Jewelry as miniature sculpture changed my attitude towards it, and I began experimenting with bone and abalone shell rings.

Although beautiful, bone was impractical. At this point I realized the advantages of working in silver. I approached a friend who was making silver Jewelry at the time and bought some silver and tools from him, along with a five-minute lesson on the intricacies of soldering jewelry.

I quickly went to work making a variety of silver and abalone Jewelry, discovering silver to be an excellent solution to my technical problems. To my great joy, my Jewelry began to sell too. I began to realize that silver had a lot of potential. It was satisfying to work with - I had come to like Jewelry!

For a while I experimented with disc Jewelry. These rings and bracelets had a thick silver wire core, on which silver or gold discs were strung like beads on a cord. The discs were free-spinning, except at the ends, where they were soldered onto the wire core. Although precious stones are nice to work with, I also appreciate the possibilities of lightweight acrylic resin used like a gemstone, where stones would be too heavy, or impractical. These earrings took an awful long time to make however.

Eventually, I drifted towards Celtic patterns and designs, as I was impressed with the messages they appeared to conceal. Not ever having written any books, apart from copying Bibles, the Celts developed ways of using visual symbols to tell a story. Accordingly the components of this image, stylized Irish wolfhounds, Cormorants, or plants became the vocabulary. The way they are used becomes the grammar of the message."

- John Urban
1945-2023