What is Precious Metal Clay and Why should you Care?

From the PMC Guild site (see link):
"Precious Metal Clay, PMC, is an exciting material developed and patented in the 1990s by Mitsubishi Materials of Japan. Microscopic particles of silver are mixed with a moist binder to create a material that has the feel and working properties of modeling clay. Using simple tools, objects are easily given shape, texture, and character. After air-drying, the objects are heated to temperatures approaching the melting point of the metal, where the particles fuse together to make a dense, fully metallic object. Fired PMC work can be polished, soldered, enameled, and enjoyed like any other silver item. PMC is available in three different versions of silver and in a 22k gold alloy.

Who is using PMC? Jewelers, certainly, who immediately appreciate the ability to achieve effects that would either be time consuming or impossible through traditional methods. Ceramists and polymer clay artists naturally gravitate to PMC too, as do dollmakers, beadmakers, and artists who work with glass. PMC spans all ages, with advocates as young as grade school and as mature as... well, very mature."

AND.... this is my point, PMC offers artists who have strength and flexibility issues with their hands another medium to work in that offers a similar joy of working in metal but also is challenging enough to keep the creative juices flowing.

Please visit the guild to read more about PMC. Then rush right out and support your local PMC artists.