Precious Metal Clay (PMC)

Manufactured by Mitsubishi Corporation,  Precious Metal Clay (PMC) is composed of fine silver particles, water and an organic binder.  It comes in clay, paste, syringe and paper forms.  There is also 24K gold PMC.  Working with PMC is like working with sticky “Play-Doh.”  The clay can be rolled, shaped, textured, carved, and painted on.  The possibilities are endless.  We have a saying “as long as it is not breathing, we can put PMC on it.”  After dried and kiln or torch fired the result will be an object that is 99.9% pure silver. The different types of PMC are PMC Standard, PMC+ and PMC3 each varying on the size of the silver particles.  Factors that will also change based on the particle size is the shrinkage of clay, firing times and temperatures and if you can put different inclusions like glass and gems into the piece.

Other producers of silver metal clay are Art Clay and Hadar Jacobson.

Bronze Clay and Copper Clay

BRONZclay is composed of 11% tin, 89%copper, water and non-toxic binding materials and COPRclay is pure copper, water and non-toxic binding materials.  Currently it comes in the clay form, but it is very easy to make paste and syringe forms.  Bill Struve of Metal Clay Adventures is the inventor of both of these clays.  Like PMC these clays can be roll, shaped, and textured.  Since they are still very flexile after drying they are great for carving and sculpting.  After drying they are kiln fired in a stainless steel container holding carbon.  Depending on the type of carbon used the finishes on the pieces are different.

Art Clay and Hadar Jabobson produce both bronze and copper clay.  While Prometheus produces bronze clay.