It took me years to adopt the computer as a real tool for my work, and more years to embark on this continuing adventure of the InterNet. Since I got my site up & running in late December 2000 I've had a ball! I've communicated in real time with artisans whose work I'd seen previously only in magazines; in a couple of cases, over a period of 20 or more years. Diane Almeyda's brilliant stuff, however, I had not seen before! Her metalsmithing skills, imagination and flair for colour meld wonderfully in this most demanding of enamel subsets, filigree plique-a-jour. Accuracy in the order of +/- 0.05mm is necessary when forming those bastard little multiple circles and semicircles and other repetitive elements or the filigree doesn't work. To put it all together the way Diane has is a continuing act of mental and physical discipline that separates the "just very good" from the practitioners in any field whose work shows they demand that extra bit of effort from themselves, for themselves - that quality, I reckon makes Diane a natural to be the second of our "Benchmarks" - see her work at http://www.plique-a-jour.com
