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hi i'm kirby allison and in today's video we head back down to austin texas this time we're visiting with an exceptionally talented silversmith lolly harrison who is known for her sterling silver belt buckles let's head inside into her workshop and see what she's working on right now please join me molly hey thank you so much uh for having me into your beautiful studio thanks for coming such a uh such pleasure and so exciting to be here and uh finally meet the woman behind these absolutely incredible belt buckles thank you so so let me know i mean tell me how um how did you get started and how long have you been doing this because i've only known about you for a few years but i've got friends that i feel like have known about you for decades probably decades would be true i've been doing it about 30 years really that time close to 30 years that's absolutely incredible i got started actually taking my first class because i had a very stressful job and i always wanted to take jewelry in college but i was really focused on photography and sculpture okay so you've always had an art background yes my dad was an architect in san antonio and my mom was an artist and my grandmother was a ceramicist so it kind of goes deep okay i always thought i couldn't make a living as an artist so when i left ut as a sophomore i transferred to trinity in san antonio and got a communications degree okay and um and then worked in that field for a very short time i guess relatively and then started taking classes and from the first class i took i was like why didn't i do this in college i love this fell in love yeah yeah well it's easy to see the passion kind of through the work because the work is um is exceptional i mean it's easy to find kind of engraved belt buckles but you know something at this level is really actually quite uncommon yeah it's different than engraving that's for sure but you still have to go through a whole design process as you would if you were engraving it but there's also a sculptural aspect to this and over the years i've developed an aesthetic that i like that hasn't been particularly easy to teach someone else to do okay well show me i mean so show us some of your kind of iconic kind of designs and belt buckles because i mean your stuff really is pretty easily recognizable i mean you have a very distinct kind of style and dna one of those really subtle you know signals that not many people know about but whenever someone that knows lolly harrison you know sees a lolly harrison belt buckle i mean you can spot it from across the room that's funny because i did i made one for a doctor here in town and he was in new orleans on the street hailing a taxi and someone was standing next to him and said um is that a lolly harrison belt buckle and um and sure enough he was like oh my goodness yes and when he told me that story i was flattered and surprised yeah but um but i've always been one that i i don't usually wear other people's initials okay you know so i like having that personal i grew up with four initials so i was always sensitive to really not being able to have anything monogrammed and um i also love woven things and so the whole aesthetic is just yeah me so describe the aesthetic so for someone that's not really familiar with your work um it's not engraving it's different than that so this one's 18 karat on sterling okay and so i choose 18 karat because i like the contrast and it's a little bit softer but i like the richness of the yellow and these are all sterling and um it's it's hard for me to say which one is my favorite yeah they both have but it's not casted and it's not engraved okay so you have a really kind of unique approach to the way that you know the um i mean there's good register on this like there's nice depth and a three-dimensionality to it that is not very common a little history on the background of the site i can't really in good conscience take 100 credit for the style i mean it goes back to the 20s and when i met my husband who is now no longer my husband i saw his belt buckle and i thought wow that is that's very interesting okay i want one and he was like well these have been a tradition in my family ranching family for decades and no one is making them anymore really and similar to this like in the style i have developed my own aesthetic in fact i got the ultimate compliment from his aunt who said yours are every bit or possibly more beautiful than the original one oh that's amazing but it's interesting the first ones when i go back and look they're definitely a little bit different so now that i've been doing it for so long i have a specific kind of way i like them to be sculpted well you certainly have a signature right i mean that's i mean that's kind of like what this i mean i'd look at this and you know it's definitely an artist's signature kind of influence on the work i mean it has your for sure yeah it's it's definitely got i mean if you're if you're looking for belt buckles or cufflinks or whatever the piece might be because once someone has their monogram done typically they start with a belt buckle but once they have that done they like cufflinks yeah and so the natural progression is usually a buckle and then cufflinks and then a money clip and you know and then we're going to get the wife something yeah because they don't wear buckles buckles quite as often as men do and so i started doing crystal jars but that's i mean your design process really the foundation is the actual sketching of the monogram yes and it's not just a standard block kind of you know script or formula that's like equally applied to everyone i mean you're really sketching the monograms out you know totally freehand yeah you know and inspired it's not like doing towels okay yeah it's not like pick your font you know um but i try to simplify it a little bit for people sometimes if you have too many choices and i'm guilty of this it's hard to make a decision yeah so i try for bespoke it's i mean too many choices is overwhelming right especially when you like them all that's a problem but some people have a distinct like or dislike for script or block or you know some people think men should be black and women should be script honestly i think it's funny cowboys when they have boots made typically they're scripted floral yes you know the more flowers the better so i have a lot of men who prefer script but it's nice to know before i go down a certain path you know we were kind of talking about this a little bit earlier lolly but this isn't engraved nor is it casted so you know once you finish the actual design of the monogram and you start your process how is this done like what is this technique called because it definitely has a degree of kind of resolution and dimensionality to it that is not common we call it hand fabricated if you're going to distinguish between casting and fabricating there's two different schools okay um so if you were casting it you would be making it out of wax and going through a process that involves heating the metal and pouring kind of injecting it yeah where this entire thing would be one piece yes i mean exactly same right um it would all be made in one go go this is they're actually hand forged the buckle base is beaten on an anvil okay and it starts as a thick rectangular piece of silver and so through forging you can taper it so if you'll notice the edge it goes from thick to thin i never know i said um and you get the hammer marks which i love to leave um and so once once it's forged out then you cut the shape and then the letters are each cut out of a solid sheet of sterling individually individually and then basically sculpted so how do you weave them together like this i mean because i mean they're all kind of intertwined yeah um that's the secret that's the magic size that's the magic that's where the magic happens honestly um because i actually did have someone speaking of casting and hand fabricating i had an extremely talented jeweler in new york say let me cut one out of wax for you this could be done so much easier and faster and he did a beautiful job in wax it was gorgeous but it just didn't have the same lightness that you get from hand fabricating so if it was cast all the underneath would be solid okay but when you actually look at it there's it's like a bridge so it has a little bit of life to it whereas lifting up on top of the base of the buckle and kind of going through the letters so there's a secret way of fitting them together where it's not super obvious yeah obviously it's metal it's not you know it doesn't like to really bend so there's a lot of little micro fitting you know little file here and then try it again and yeah keep going until it fits together um similar i don't know if you remember those old puzzle rings from like back in the day um that all there were like four pieces and they all fit together and then you take them apart they're all bent out of shape well similarly here before the monogram is soldered together right as i finish fitting the whole thing if you took it apart it would just all be all misshapen yeah deformed yeah that's amazing so it's funny i get the letters to a smooth pristine state and then i mess them up yeah i mean they cut they start out flat but then you also are filing in the shape of each individual basically to give the dimension that i have come to define as my style you know every every silversmith is going to hold the file at a different angle or you know there's always a little variation but i've developed a style of sculpting them that works and i think results in in the right depth and character yeah beautiful so you know these are cufflinks of course right again same monogram but smaller yes right and then usually the studs are just a single initial um very western here you know for the big stud set right i usually do four i mean if somebody needed five they could they could do five but i also like hidden details i chose to design my own backs and that was beautiful the interwoven design shows obviously when you show the inside of your yeah even here on the um you know i like hidden details i like i mean even though you don't see it i like it you do see it though that's one of my pet peeves with cufflinks is oftentimes they're just jeweled on one side right and then on the other side it's plain and ordinary yeah i'm surprised at how many like high-end jewelers don't pay attention to the inside that's amazing well it takes additional kind of detail and additional effort i like the way it feels too i mean i like i like it's very tactile that's another thing that is hard to sell on the internet because once people feel these and they're heavy and they have a good they just have a good feel they do i mean and also it's one of the things where you know you can't really fully appreciate that in a photograph like even just visually right i mean the way that there is so much dimensionality to not only how each letter is um filed to give it the shape but then how the letters are then interwoven to form the monogram yeah i think when you move it around in your hand you get a much better sense of it than you would just in a stationary picture i mean i'd love do you want to show that belt buckle unfortunately unfortunately i'm wearing it but this is um kind of the newer style i'd say is becoming the the one that we were holding this one is um probably the classic all-time that's mostly what people have ordered over the time and you've increased the size of this even a little bit to accommodate larger belts i have so i do a one-inch version for the leather and that's often if someone wants a tapered belt they'll taper it out to an inch and a quarter kind of like this um that one's i think that one's dates back to when the one inch belt was in fashion yeah but yes a one inch could taper out if someone likes just a wider strap like this is a 1 8 then they would go with a slightly wider buckle yeah yeah um and this one is this one's a clamp it doesn't uh have a post which is nice especially after thanksgiving dinner um this actually got made with holes but the beauty of this one is that it clamps and no one has to know that you are less slowly letting it out exactly and it's also got details on the back so this is almost kind of you know it's almost an inverse of the i mean it's like a almost it's not a reverse it's the same monogram but just on the back right so everybody everybody gets mine oh that those are okay that's the lolli yes so for you they match but i i have i have a very dear friend who's an architect and he always shows people the back he's like the back is so great um so another person that appreciates the hidden details absolutely that's amazing so the butterflies are beautiful and they're articulated also they are they're made out of argentine which is a special alloy of sterling it's actually 935 instead of 925 okay um it has some interesting properties that are sort of technical but they um allow some fun creativity yeah so for some for the gentleman that's looking to get a belt buckle he also he can get he can blunt the uh the blow by you know also getting a beautiful necklace for his wife or you can get her a crystal jar for her um cotton balls or m m yeah and then also stationary and then stationary which was it was a natural progression from doing belt buckles and cufflinks i had a couple of clients continue to ask me if i was ever going to do stationery so we finally got that going and um we do some i don't it's not something i yeah it's almost a um you know kind of a service to your existing clients to say well it is it's fun though i mean there is more leeway you have with designing a monogram because it's it's not physically woven with the thickness that's the other thing with cutting and weaving the letters it's they're not paper thin yeah and so you have to take that into account when you're going up and down and through yeah but with stationery you can do a little more have you ever encountered some initials that you just couldn't and it's almost like a jigsaw puzzle it is and i i used to do puzzles with my dad as a child okay and um i think the very i grew up we went to mexico every year and inevitably would go to tosco every trip which is the sea of silver okay and um i remember the kid running through all the silver smith shops in tosco and peeking back behind the workshops and seeing the guys in there making big trays and the very first piece i ever wanted that i picked out i think i was three was a little tiny braided silver ring oh wow but yeah i think i'm able to come up with it but i do have to walk away from some of them just to let it they are jigsaw puzzles for sure but i think that's another thing that really appeals to me that that just sort of hit that cylinder well absolutely beautiful i'd love to see kind of some of the process if you have anything you can show us i have one thing that i can show you yeah that'd be great so we talked about forging and that's um usually done with a for these this hammer here which is a pretty heavy round face hammer which spreads the metal when you're when you're pounding it um and so this is the blank i mean this is yeah that's how it's the flat piece that would form basically the buckle right basically that's what you do and then it ends up flaring naturally so you're putting forging it okay so that as you thin it out it flares naturally right because it's thinner towards this end right so you're concentrating your blows more on the front half of the slab okay and the face of the hammer spreads it oh wow that's interesting so and then you would cut the shape in order to get the precision of the shape out of that so once it's forged out then what about the curve are you forging the curve into it also well or is that down at the end at some point it's refined it does naturally curve but i um have a favorite little spot in this anvil that i turn over and um put my leather there so it doesn't mark it and this one right here actually has just been soldered so that's interesting so that curve is actually kind of baked into the anvil i mean that's pretty much i uh there's probably a bunch of different ways you could do it but this just happens to happens to work and so i stick it there so you have to hit it with wood if you don't want to leave a mark and so this is how i usually shape it and then do the other side and then you check it so if you don't have a curve in it it's not going to fit your waist very well it's going to be slightly uncomfortable i think and there's an elegance to the curve also yeah for sure so that's how that um the curve happens interesting so you've got the you know the blank right that forms the base plate right of the buckle and you're hammering it out kind of creates the flare you're kind of pounding the shape into it and then over here i guess is your workbench that you begin working on the actual letters yes so this is where you're actually filing the shape into each individual letter yes well let's grab one of these so these start out really flat i mean this is flat and square and you know what you have right here with this h i mean has beautiful has a little bit of cerefone to it you know and you know kind of some three-dimensional shape right it's sculpted so look at this what it is yes so once all the letters are filed then i sand them get them pretty smooth because once they're soldered together it's not easy to take out you know marks from the files so then they get further refined [Music] and once i get them just exactly how i like them so you're polishing i mean that the sanding is basically the polishing no no okay so you polish also that just smooths it out that's beautiful because the files are pretty coarse and you start out with a coarse file to remove metal quickly and then you go back with a finer file and smooth it out and then the sanding gets it further further yeah so how many so you've got a few initials here can you show us kind of whatever the three are i have to look at it and see which one to solder together first depending on where it's gonna how it's gonna fit in it really is a puzzle though right it really is um and you have to use some pliers to adjust them even to file them um to get the right angle on that but once it's all filed then and i wanted to put this j in here i would see where it goes okay and you're kind of still continuing to manipulate the letters even as you're fitting them together very much yeah they have to kind of be adjusted constantly and sometimes you have to re-cut it so you've got them like that and then you have to continue to shape them to lie flat yes while retaining that dimensionality once they're soldered once the letters are filed and sculpted there's no further refinement i'd have to shape the unit of three letters to the curved face of the buckle and then make sure that it's laying down so it can solder but um as far as any further manipulation of the letters themselves this is beautiful they're pretty set so this is jay what's the initials here w-o-j w-o-j okay i think one thing that i've that appeals to me just sort of philosophically is that our lives are woven together and our names oftentimes are generational and i don't know there's when i'm making a piece i'm thinking about this person thinking about their name i'm thinking about them opening it up i'm you know there's a lot of just thought that goes into making the piece and um i like i like that story of just things being um have meaning and yeah it's gorgeous so this is basically done it just needs to be with the final polishing it needs the tongue and i i have a specific tongue that i like and um oftentimes you'll see just something very basic but to me when you just see the little speck coming through the leather i want it to look just right so um so this gets sculpted also the end of it gets shaped and then this gets wrapped around this beautiful so that's even again all handmade yeah that lid to the jar up there i did for um anne hathaway and her husband and they wanted in the middle a and a and so that was a masculine a and a feminine a more or less and then their wedding date wow um you use um polishing like what's it called polishing what do you put on the actual belt the polishing it's like polishing silver or polishing yeah no it goes through um looks like a shoe shine when people say i'm when they hear me say i've got a polish they think i'm just taking a silver cloth and polishing it but it has to go from this to this yeah it goes through uh three polishing compounds like a diamond paste or something kind of yeah it's a waxy um compound that has different grits embedded into it okay but um i think everybody find there's a hundred different polishing compounds on the market but i found some good ones some good ones and then what about the patina i mean because it is silver it'll tarnish yeah and so that's intentional the patina is done with a very fumey substance called liver of sulfur okay and it's a i use a liquid version you can buy it as rocks but it uh immediately reacts with the copper in the sterling okay and turns it black okay and then you polish so this whole thing would be black and then you polish that off and it so that's what kind of leaves this black kind of running around and so if that wasn't there you wouldn't see the letters very well okay so a lot of times when people are polishing their pieces they'll use cream and that's fine if you take a toothbrush and get all the cream out after you're done but typically i recommend just a silver polishing cloth because that's really all it needs yeah the creams or the dips um we'll remove all that and it won't look so great and then they have got to send their belt buckles back to you yeah and they have um uh so i yeah i i um i like the black on there you just it wouldn't read if yeah it would just be too shiny yeah well beautiful i mean this is an amazing work of art and um thank you so much for kind of sharing your craft with us this is great yeah i mean it's it's beautiful to see this level of silversmith kind of um belt buckle work that's not in like a country in western like huge belt buckle right i mean this is you know something i could wear on the weekend kind of a gentleman's yeah it's not a texan thing i think i mean my new hashtag is gonna be you're not dressed until you're well-dressed i like it right um and for me a belt buckle is one of the few things at least that men can for jewelry yeah but if there's no sense in having an ugly belt buckle when or and not ugly but just ordinary ordinary brass or whatever it is when you have a beautiful suit or a really nice pair of jeans or you know something well it's one of these things that you can keep for the rest of your life and there's a durability to it and even if the belt strap wears out give your belt strap yeah because they snap on and they you know it lasts generations and it gets better with time i like all the dings and scratches i um call it your patina of life absolutely i have a friend that gives these to some of his nephews and godson's graduation gifts right and like what a great kind of gift is you're kind of beginning your adult life you know to have a nice little kind of token of adulthood yeah you know you're entering in the world of you know being well dressed as expected yeah yeah well it can make a pair of jeans look really good yeah absolutely wow lolly hey thank you so much this is amazing and you know um you know so great to finally be able to meet you in person thank you it's great to meet you too thank you for coming to visit if someone wants to learn more kind of about you know your designs and maybe they want to commission a belt buckle what's the best way for them to kind of move forward well i'm redoing my website but i do have a website harrison.com okay and do you have an instagram also i have an instagram lolly harrison designs okay and uh that's probably the most current photos and it obviously it's not something you can just point and click so i like to have a conversation with the client anyway yeah so um my contact information is on the website and just to kind of strike up a conversation and talk about commissioning something sure yes it starts with a conversation yeah great hey lolly thank you so much absolutely beautiful uh beautiful work thank you thank you so much cheers [Music] wow well it's such a pleasure to be able to visit with lolly absolutely incredible work and i have to say such a distinctive kind of signature handwriting here with these belt buckles you know really i mean an iconic design and a very very elegant and classy so what a pleasure to be able to step inside this small little artist studio and actually see how loli is doing her work her craft and you know every single time i walk i walk into kind of an artisan studio and actually see them doing their work i always am left with a much more profound and powerful appreciation for what it is they do so such a privilege to be able to walk in here if you're watching the channel for the first time time make sure you hit that red subscribe button in the lower right hand corner so you can learn whenever we release new videos if you don't follow me on instagram please do at kirby allison's best way to stay up to date about kind of what's going on in our world and of course if you haven't visited kirbyallison.com please do so of course it's how we support this channel and there you'll find the largest collection of luxury garment care and luxury shoe care accessories in the world as well as other great clothing accessories for the well-dressed like this beautiful sovereign grade necktie pocket square and so much more i'm kirby allison and i love to help the well-dressed acquire and care for their wardrobes while exploring the world of quality craftsmanship and tradition thanks for watching [Music] you