WORDS Tara Crutchfield
PHOTOGRAPH Amy Sexson
Rogue’ s Relics Themes of history, science, and nature are threaded throughout the pieces of Polk County-based jewelry company, Rogue’s Relics. From rat skulls to snake skeletons, sixth-grade science teacher Kortlyn Dougherty uses a process called electroforming to repurpose the beauty of nature. You could say her pieces are dead things turned beautiful jewelry.
Friends encouraged her to sell her jewelry, and in late 2019, early 2020, Dougherty started an Etsy shop called Rogue’s Relics where she would sell wire-wrapped stones, earrings, bracelets, pendants, and the like. When COVID-19 made its way to the states early last year, Dougherty, working as a retail manager, was furloughed from her job. She needed something to fill her time and maintain a positive mindset during the uncertainty.
Dougherty’s father was influential in the interests that guide her jewelry design. “He’s always loved nature, always drew me to nature. […] We had a telescope when I was little, and we would take our telescope in the backyard and go stargazing,” she said. Dougherty loves animals too. “My sister wants to be a vet when she grows up, so we’ve always had a ton of animals in the house.”
On social media, she stumbled upon what appeared to be soldered copper. She began researching it to learn how to solder, and during her research, she came across some pieces that caught her attention. “I specifically remember seeing a cicada and a butterfly that were coated in copper. I thought it was just molded, that they had poured copper in a mold.” She discovered it was a tangible object with copper grown on it, a look achieved through electroforming. After ‘diving down the rabbit hole,’ she began collecting supplies and learning more about the process. “Thank goodness for the internet,” she said.
As a child, Kortlyn would catch lizards, keep them as pets, feed them bugs from outside, and make ‘little fairy houses’ in her yard. When her dad accidentally ran over a ‘pet’ frog in the driveway, Kortlyn wouldn’t let her parents touch her beloved dead pet – she didn’t want him to go away, she said. When the frog corpse disappeared from the driveway, she was devastated, and her parents had to dig through the trash to find its body so that they could give it a proper burial. “I always wanted to help animals in some way, […] Now I guess I help them be something beautiful in their afterlife.”
“I taught myself,” said Dougherty of electroforming. “I created the paint – it’s a conductive paint that I use which allows electricity to flow through it. I ended up making the solution as well. There’s a solution that you have to put the objects in with the paint on them, and the solution also allows electricity to flow through it.”
Dougherty’s father also sparked her interest in science. “He taught me about molecules when I could barely even say a sentence,” she said, noting that he always did his best to instill a wonderment of Mother Nature. Her love of the subject continued throughout school. “I remember in seventh grade, we dissected an owl pellet and put together rodent bones from this owl pellet. I thought that was so cool,” she said. Dougherty even took a middle school science class in the room she teaches in now.
She started her electroforming experiment in a small mason jar with 12-gauge copper wire. Sulfuric acid is also needed for the electroforming process. She laughed, describing the odd looks thrown her way when she made trips to the hardware store to check ingredients off her list, including copper pipe and sulfuric acid. “They’re looking at me like ‘What is she creating? This chick is insane.’”
Dougherty has been making jewelry as a hobby since childhood. She would string together bits and bobs made of plastic beads and anything else she could find at a craft store. All of these interests converged during a difficult time for both the world and Kortlyn personally. A family emergency and a job furlough turned out to be catalysts for Rogue’s Relics and another dream – her teaching career.
“I was doing the wire first. It was okay; I wasn’t totally failing. There’s a lot of components because you’re running an electrical current through this solution. […] You have to get the PH balance right, you have to get the conductivity of the paint right, the acid levels – it’s pretty intense. And I used a lot of trial and error.” Dougherty has upgraded to an eight-gallon tank and found the copper pipe, as opposed to wire, is best for her jewelry-making purposes. The process is time-consuming, with items spending roughly 80 to 90 hours in the solution to deposit a thick coating on her creatures and foliage.
LEARNING TO ELECTROFORM Kortlyn had been dabbling in wire-wrapping for some time, finding inspiration and ideas online. In 2019, her father had two strokes. He was in the hospital for months, and she would stay with him often as he recovered. “I needed something to keep my mind busy,” she said. Dougherty would bring her wire-wrapping supplies to the hospital and started building up an inventory of jewelry. “I was making things to get my mind busy and focus my energy on something productive.”
After the process is complete, she gives them an antique flourish, using Liver of Sulfer to darken the unsealed raw copper. She neutralizes the solution with baking soda to stop the antiquing process and polishes the pieces with steel wool, a Dremel, and a polishing cloth. - CONTINUED ON PAGE 26 -
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