Meet Grant Saxman

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Grant Saxman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Grant, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

Confidence and self esteem are two very important, but oftentimes difficult things to work on as an artist. I often find myself comparing my work to other’s I see online, and it can be easy to put yourself and your own work down when you see other talented artists making great things (why can’t I figure out how to do this technique when this person online makes it look so easy!)
What has helped me is to take pride in my own personal accomplishments and make sure to look back on my growth and development. For example, I recently had a silver piece break right near the last step of finishing it. I was pretty upset at myself for messing it up, but while making it again I found that not only was I able to do it twice as fast as before, but the finished piece came out even better than the previous one would have. It was important for me to be able to see that, despite failing the first time, I had learned and become a better craftsman through that failure, and that is something I could be proud of.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am an artist that works in many different mediums, but I mainly focus on silversmithing, bladesmithing, and gemcutting. When it comes to jewelry and knives, I particularly like the fact that they are functional pieces of art. I come from an engineering background and love to find ways to not only make a beautiful piece, but one that is well optimized and designed to perform its function well. I am especially obsessed with materials and metallurgy, and love trying new and niche materials with crazy properties – things like using a gem material that sparkles like no other, a cutting edge steel alloy that stays sharp for ages, or a silver alloy that amazingly never tarnishes.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

For any craftsman or artist, patience is definitely key. It takes a lot of patience to be able to make sure that every aspect of a piece is perfect – even if that means starting over again. It wasn’t something I was born with either, I found my patience slowly developed as I grew older, and specifically grew with my passion as I became more invested in learning and studying jeweling and bladesmithing. The biggest thing that I found to help develop this trait is definitely to hold yourself to a high standard. Don’t allow yourself to take the easy way out and ignore small mistakes, take pride in crafting every single aspect of a piece to the best of your abilities.
My knowledge also sets me apart in my crafts. I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree in material science engineering, and have spent over a decade trying to learn everything about the science that goes into producing great knives and jewelry. The best way to improve here is to just keep studying. Books, youtube videos, and talking in online forums is a great way of gaining knowledge about just about anything you could be interested in, and tend to be my go-to nowadays when I need to learn something new.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

Yes absolutely I would love to collaborate! I am particularly interested in jewelers who are looking for precision and fantasy cut stones, as I tend to cut stones faster than I can set them and often have an excess. Please send me an email at YozakuraForge@gmail.com or a dm on my Instagram @yozakura_forge If you are interested!

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