Hey, as you guys know I make mostly pendants. And a lot of galleries require me to supply chains for them. (One actually required me not to so they could sell their own.) So I've bought bulk chain from riogrande and at trade shows. I'm pretty picky about quality so generally they're pretty nice. Now when I was asked to swap out my pieces currently on display for Spring/Summer I brought in about two dozen pendants, rings and earrings. Almost all of my pieces were rejected, not because of anything with my workmanship, but because they didn't like the chains. I was informed that every link had to be soldered. I don't have a soldering setup, so I just had to take my stuff and go home to a condescending 'you can pay for classes and solder them in class, or find chains good enough.' Now, I've gone through my (slightly too large) personal chain collection, even my nicest gold chains don't have the link attaching the clasp to the chain soldered. And some of my cheapo broken three times why do I bother to fix these are technically soldered.
So ideas for chain alternates? I can't do my viking knit there anymore since again the links aren't soldered, ditto for finishing with ribbons. Most sites don't give enough of an image to see if the links are soldered and I've already bought several dozen chains I now can't use.
I really want to totally tell them where to shove it, but since I'm out of one other place and a third still has my pieces but isn't responding to emails I really can't. So looking for affordable ideas to get together in time for the August jury.
Thanks!