There are two books about making jewelry stamps I especially like. They are:
“Making Design Stamps for Jewelry” by Bradford M. Smith, Whimsey Wylde publisher, 2016 and “The Art of Stamping” by Matthieu Cheminée, Brynmorgen Press publisher, 2019.
Both books are available in printed and Kindle editions. They have detailed instructions on how to make and use stamps, swages, embossing dies, and shot plates to create jewelry.
Bradford Smith is a studio jeweler, lapidarist, and workshop instructor based in California. Following a career in industrial automation, he taught Advanced Jewellery in the Los Angeles school system. He designed and built a new jewelry facility at the Santa Monica Adult Education Center where he teaches.
Matthieu Cheminée is a jeweler born in Paris, who has traveled the world exploring a variety of jewelry-making techniques. He is a co-founder of The Toolbox Initiative which collects new or gently used tools and silver. The materials are provided to under-funded jewelers, primarily in West Africa. Cheminée currently lives in Canada.
I didn’t discover Cheminée’s “The Art of Stamping” until 2021. It is an expanded discussion of techniques presented in “Making Design Stamps for Jewelry” by Bradford M. Smith. Bradford presents useful tips on how to hold the steel being formed into stamps to help ensure the correct angles are achieved. He gives instructions on how to create the holders, and how to use power tools to facilitate making stamps.
Cheminée concentrates on traditional methods that use basic tools to produce stamps. He is as interested in the artists who use stamps as he is in the stamps. The book includes lively interviews with artisans from around the world who specialize in stamping. There are some typos (for example, an incomplete sentence on page 238 in the printed edition due to a printing error), but the photographs and layout are spectacular. Best of all, the instructions are clear, and the gallery of stamps at the end of the book provides inspiration for developing your own stamp designs.
Click here for a demonstration of tool making techniques described in Cheminée’s book: