Justified Sinner

another week

2012-01-31T20:27:00.003Z

Despite the best intentions of the last post, I've not posted anything for a week as I've been embarking on a commission from a customer who does not want any of the details published online until she has received the piece.

Since I last wrote, I've been asked to have a solo showcase at the Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre in Wales. I've exhibited there before - in their Re:Collect show in 2009, so it is nice to be invited back to exhibit a small collection of new works. This has meant digging out pieces which have been finished and haven't been spoken for, such as "Noli Me Tangere":

But also making new pieces too, so the next few weeks will be spent working on those. I managed to start some of them on Monday and finished a trio of earrings made from tiny spanners today:

Left to right, set with chrysoprase, green quartz and moonstone.
I've also managed to make a start on a pendant, the name of which was suggested by my friend and colleague, James Davidson... "Dr. Strangelove". It should be apparent why!

Although it doesn't really look like it, it is made from silver and the steel container from a CO2 cartridge of the sort used to make frothy cream! I've still got loads to do to it, but the shape is really pleasing and it is very, very light. The tail is going to be set with a stone where the propulsion would be on a real rocket.

new year

2012-01-23T20:24:00.001Z

I can't believe that I've managed to get three weeks into the year without posting anything techniacl on here. It is not as if I've not been busy in the workshop, what with making a new spiky mace in silver and shibuichi:

1) A Christmas tree bauble filled with wax:

2) Hollowed out:

3) Stuck back together:

4) Lathed round:

5) Drilled:

6) Spikes Cast in Shibuichi:

7) Spikes cleaned by turning:

8) Ball cleaned by turning:

9) Assembled by soldering:

10) Final spike and bail screwed in place:

12) Finished mace pendant, awaiting chain:

Additionally, I've made a bracelet from an old file:

And have started work on a small production run in collaboration with my friend Zook, the "humble doodler"!

Zook and I worked together on the tattoo project for "Beneath The Skin" last year. This plasticine model will be scanned in 3D then made in wax for casting.

Also dug out an old piece which I made as a sample and which I forgot about: a ring made from a section of iron gas pipe and set with a synthetic ruby. This was made to see if I could make a setting without soldering or using traditional tension-setting techniques. The tube has been cut and the seat cut with a burr. There is nothing else holding the stone in place. It looks pretty good when polished:

Now I'm working on a commission to make another bracelet like the one shown above, but which I can't put online until it is completed and it has been presented to the person for whom it is being made.

supercollider photographs

2012-01-09T20:04:00.003Z

Happy new year, albeit belatedly.
Just got the proper photographs of Supercollider back from Neilson Photography: phenomenally good quality, as ever!

(Click to enlarge and see the details.)

serendipitous

2011-12-22T20:16:00.000Z

To very nicely round out my "jewellery year", my Apocalyptic work has been featured in Serendipity Magazine.

Brighton Rock

2011-12-21T20:53:00.002Z

Off to Brighton on Friday for the festive holidays! Today I had hardly any students in, had finished the charms for the SCC show and have nothing that I can really be doing on my two big projects ("Fashion:Victim" and "Future Legend") so I picked up a nut from the old West Pier in Brighton, a beautiful Victorian pier which had a theatre at the end and which has been allowed to fall into disrepair following an arson attack by a company which didn't want it to be restored:

The nut was found on the sand under the pier at very low tide once and is heavily corroded, like the rest of the structure:

I made the nut into a ring, set with black onyx on the top and a haematite behind. The shank is made from a piece of steel found on a different beach and not from Brighton:

A friend of mine who used to live in Brighton pointed out that it is a kind of "mourning ring" for the pier. I like to think that Pinkie, the amoral gangster anti-hero from Graham Greene's novel, "Brighton Rock", might wear it with his sharp suit. One of my favourite books.

charmed iii

2011-12-20T18:48:00.003Z

I received an email from Sharon Massey earlier this week, inviting me to submit some pieces for the third "Charmed" exhibition at the SCC in Pittsburgh, to which I happily agreed. Some time ago, Bob Ebendorf and I had been talking about me making a series of charm bracelets which I started but which never got anywhere as I couldn't get over the hurdle of creating a complex piece with essentially no "narrative". (The original plan was to create 10 bracelets and 100 charms which would be sold to order on the understanding that each bracelet would have 10 charms selected by the purchaser on a first-come-first-serve basis.) This means, however, that my "vague" WIP tray - projects started and abandoned to varying degrees of temporariness - has a fair selection of partially-completed charms. Thus I have managed to bring together five charms for the show in two days!
As the show is in Pittsburgh, I also incorporated some of the metal objects I found in the street when visiting over the summer:

Natural blue zircon and polymer clay faux bird-skull by Dee Wilder.

Spring washer, black spinel and freely-moving carved camel-bone skull.

Nut, silver, amethyst and chrysoprase. I will clean the setting wax from the stone before sending!

Obsidian skull set on a washer, hung with a garnet.

Sawblade from Pittsburgh, needles from Clydebank.

leftovers (noli me tangere)

2011-12-13T20:07:00.002Z

I made a piece today from bits left over from Supercollider and a boar's tooth:

Probably not going to get much done before the holidays now.

supercollider completed

2011-12-12T20:11:00.001Z

Finally finished the Supercolliderpiece today. Not really in my usual style, but I'm fairly pleased with the way this worked out. Off to the photographer now!

2011-12-11T21:35:00.001Z

I've just spent the last few hours going through my photographs taken over the last year, trying to select a favourite to post on one of the Micro Four-Thirds groups on Flickr as one of those "end-of-year" review things. It's been a brilliant year! I've been to Sheffield, Perth (Scotland), Genova, New York and Pittsburgh and have made Cold Genius, A Forest, all the Beneath The Skin works, Supercollider and have started Future Legend and Fashion Victim.
Picking one overall photograph from the year as a favourite was really hard, but I whittled it down to seven, the one I finally submitted as the overall favourite being this one:

Taken in Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Plaza.

The other favourites were (in no particular order):

The details of each photograph are on the Flickr page which hosts them. Clicking the photograph will take you to that page. All these shots were taken with either my Panasonic 20mm f1.7 pancake or the Voigtlander 25mm f0.95 on the Panasonic G1.

stone setting

2011-12-06T20:09:00.001Z

Nice day today; the students were either busy working on their Christmas sale or they were held up by the snow, so I spent a very relaxing day chatting to them and setting stones:

One of the students said that this looked "like something to control a spaceship"!

The little particle-clusters are set with garnets. They are really bright but don't show up here.

black hole sun!

2011-12-05T19:58:00.001Z

Disaster...

Trying to cast the last - and largest - in the series of spheres made from old sewing-machine needles, I had to use a gigantic flask which I had never used before and which cooled down too much before the full vacuum could be drawn under it, so the metal chilled and the structure didn't fill. There was about 24 hours of milling involved in making the wax components for this piece and I don't have the time or inclination, so it will have three spheres instead of five, which I actually think will look more balanced with the upper element. This is the sphere I was trying to cast:

It is not, by any means, all bad news. The main section of the pendant is coming along well. This is it pre-polished and ready for polishing and setting:

And I even managed to get another link made and ready for setting:

The students' jewellery sale opens tomorrow night. If anyone is in Glasgow and wants to pop by the college for a drink and a snack, to say hello and have a look at their superb work, it opens at 6pm and runs until 8pm. (Apologies for the photo quality: I took this with my phone.)

I've been using the marble stamps carved for me by Janos:

Dr. Seuss, I Owe You...

2011-11-29T22:07:00.001Z

The Supercollider piece is progressing apace. I managed to cast the central torus element today:

I got really fed-up cleaning it! Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this, though it still presents the problem of how I am going to get all the investment plaster out of the inside of the hollow bits! I also managed to get some of the links for the chain made today:

And the "emitter" from which the secondary pendant, the needle pieces I posted previously, will descend:

This caused one of the students to comment that I had obviously enjoyed Dr. Seuss when I was younger. As Dingo will tell you, I know "Green Eggs and Ham" off by heart and can (and do) recite it when required (or even not required).
Here is where I finished the day:

working backwards (sustainably)

2011-11-27T20:03:00.001Z

On Friday, I was sent to the most annoying meeting I've ever been forced to go to. It was given by a moron, an idiot who thought that it was enough to pompously declaim his unvalidated, ill-researched opinions on things relating to "sustainability", yet was hypocritical enough to brag about his "frequent visits to Greece" and his "two weeks in the Maldives", presumably all involving flights. Well, it is nice he can afford these things by selling his services as an advisor on sustainability. The talk itself was dross - I wouldn't have accepted his Powerpoint as a presentation from one of my first-year students - and he succeeded in not only being rude and insulting to his audience personally - for not having the intelligence to understand the basics of sustainability, believe it or not - but was made assumptions about them - suggesting that we all spent our evenings watching celebrities on television - additionally, he was foully heterosexist, sexist and actually even managed to be racist...
You might well be wondering why I have used this space to vent about something so utterly irrelevant. Well, this particular cloud had a silver lining: I actually managed to use the time (almost one and a half hours) to prepare some drawings to make sense of my vague ideas for the Supercollider piece, channelling my fizzing anger into my sketchbook, rather than at the fat slob in a cheap suit who was haranguing us, thus being creative and keeping me in gainful employment!

Here you can see the "torus" structure from which the "particles" will explode. For years, I've had some sections of rusted spiral steel from a car which I found on Southwold beach and which is some sort of shield for a brake or other cable. It is really hard to work with as it is tough and springy and won't really anneal:

Previously, I used this material to make some earrings which were inspired by the location at which I found it:

This time, I thought it perfect for creating a sci-fi/steampunk hybrid feel to the piece by using it inside sections of the torus, returning, again to a MUCH older piece, one of my very first explorations in found-object jewellery from the late 1990s, "Scary Baby":

(So old, I don't even have a decent photograph of it!)

As you can see, some of the elements of this piece have transferred directly to the drawings for Supercollider. Originally, I was going to make the torus by hand, but as I can't reliably bend thick tubing, I decided to make it by modelling the basic form in Rhino and milling it out:

As this is too big for our milling machines, I had to find a way to make it in sections. Remembering "Airfix" kits from when I was younger, I split the torus into sections with lugs and grooves to make it easy to reassemble accurately:

(Photograph by "unloveablesteve" on Flickr, used under CC BY-NC-SA License 2.0)

As with the "particle" elements, the steel sections of this element are going to be cast-in-place, this time using the spiral wire from above:

Ready to cast.
I also managed to get started on some of the other sections of the chain and for attaching to the torus:

I spotted work by one of my ex-students, Ishbel Watson, in a gallery window this weekend, which is excellent!

A week of getting excellent mail, too! I got this from Dingo:

And Janos sent me a stamp and a seal which he carved for me from Cararra Marble:

I'll post more of this when I get some stamping ink and sealing wax.

back to blogging!

2011-11-20T20:11:00.001Z

Having now had a couple of weeks where a combination of loads of things on my plate and general late-autumn lethargy have conspired to prevent me from making any blog entries, I'm back to it after a week in which I saw an opera featuring a depressed singing egg and created a seriously dangerous structure.

Having seen the Call for Entries on the SNAG Website for the "Hot Under The Collar" show, part of SNAG Conference next year, I decided to create something specifically for it, rather than trawl out one of my old pieces which have been seen before. Since making the Spoon Skull Cross, I have been thinking a lot about the process of casting steel objects in place, something that has been sitting subliminally in my mind since studying Chris Knight's fantastical chalice earlier this year:

The Spoon Skull Cross has used sewing-machine needles cast in place at the back and I wanted to create a piece which makes use of this process as the primary focus, rather than as a decorative element. Consequently, I came up with the idea of putting these all over the surface of a sphere:

This Rhino model was then milled in wax. Unfortunately, I only have access to a 4-axis mill and so had to make the ball in sections which slot together:

The needles have a groove ground into the shank of each one and this is filled with soft beeswax; the needle is then inserted into the wax model shown above:

This is then invested and cast:

I've been working on a variety of sizes of these structures:

These structures return me to a form with which I was obsessed a few years ago, that of the mace:

This is a piece I made about twelve years ago and kind of marks my movement away from minimalism and into a more truthful - for me - interest in complexity and decoration. (The photograph above actually shows a remake from about eight years ago, the original piece being used to remake this. It is ostensibly the same - I didn't remake the chain but did remake the ball, catch and the spikes to lighten the whole thing and refine the spike shape. The ball is almost exactly the same size as a table-tennis ball, from which is was moulded!)

Other than that, I've been making some new items for the Etsy shop, as well as swapping round some pieces there for some pieces returned from a gallery:

As to the opera featuring a singing egg, well, it was a brilliant collaboration between theatre company "Magnetic North", contemporary music ensemble "The Red Note Ensemble", composer David Fennessy and artist David Shrigley and featured not only a singing egg but puppet vegetables and a psychotic butcher... A pantomime for adults, a proper opera - sung through with arias, duets, trios, recitative and ensemble pieces - and I really, really hope it goes on tour. It would be a great shame if it were only seen on the three nights it ran for.

No photographs of the production as I really don't like to take photographs while things are underway, nor do I like other people doing so.

I also made a welcome return to the Citizen's Theatre two weeks ago, a place I have overlooked for some time now but unjustifiably so; much of my understanding of theatre was born of attending performances at this place when I was at school and their direction has always been interesting and defiantly unpretentious.

My friend, Mark Kydd, was in a play there, "Spain", which was funny and compelling and he, of course, was superb in it. Part of what made the experience so enjoyable was that he had worked on the play a lot with the author - the piece was written specially for him and for the space - and there was a certain pleasure to be had in spotting the elements of his life, the thinly-disguised references to people we both know, within the text. A gruelling, physical and comic performance lasting just over an hour, I regret going on the last night so that I couldn't tell anyone else to go and see it.

Belated Hallowe'en and a word from Fran and Anna

2011-11-03T21:37:00.000Z

I wanted to have this piece finished for Hallowe'en but things got in the way, so here is my Spoon Skull Cross, a bit of fun made from iron wire from a building site in Brighton, a rusted bolt, some flat ground tool steel from a derelict workshop, a silver souvenir teaspoon, silver, copper, rubies, sapphire, garnets and carnelian:

This was quite interesting to make as I cast the needles in place, having cut grooves in them and then filled the grooves with soft wax. These were then pushed into a wax model which I had milled to fit. The whole thing was invested and cast and the needles hold firmly in place, surviving barrel-polishing and manual polishing. After quenching the flask to remove the plaster, I tempered the needles to stop them being brittle.

The front of the cross is properly inlaid with copper, using undercuts and a hammer:

I've also finally posted the Call for Entries to the Crafthaus exhibition, "Scotland the What?", which ought to be fun to put together. I'm curating it with my good friend Jeff Zimmer, a glass artist based in Scotland but who originally came here from the USA.

Jings! Crivvens! Help ma boab!!

online exhibits

2011-11-01T21:41:00.001Z

As a bit of a precursor to an online exhibition I'm organising on Crafthaus about contemporary craft in Scotland, glass-artist Jeff Zimmer, an American who is representing Scotland at SOFA, has just posted images of the works he is exhibiting there. Hauntingly beautiful.

His exhibit is reviewed on The Glass Quarterly blog. Jeff writes of her review that he is pleased that she understood the subject matter but, "I think her title is a bit strong, as 'indictment' implies having reached a conclusion/judgement. What I'm really saying is that we all whitewash our histories. We need to in order to live with ourselves. We create the 'pretty' version of our life, decisions and histories so we can continue to view ourselves as honourable, noble, honest, even 'good.' I hope it will serve more as a focus for meditation on those themes than an 'indictment.' That's why the pieces are so 'quiet' - to aid a slower, more considered thought process."
These are stunning pieces and really need to be seen to appreciate their subtlety and scale.

My own work featured in a less glamorous but no less appreciated online exhibition of work by makers in Scotland on Etsy, curated by Cate Fitt.

More about the Crafthaus exhibition in the next few days.

another visit to birmingham

2011-10-29T22:46:00.004+01:00

A flying visit to Birmingham for a meeting and the opening of Terry Hunt's marvellous "All Golds" exhibition. Terry has been one of the main educators in the jewellery industry in the UK for over 40 years, teaching at the jewellery school of UCE in the city at all levels of expertise. In his way, he has taught many of the current "movers and shakers" of the industry and to celebrate his retirement - it is hard to imagine how anyone could ever replace his boundless energy and educational expertise and skill - he invited 100 of his previous students to exhibit two pieces: one student piece from when he taught them, and one current piece.
The show is excellent and is well worth a visit if remotely near Birmingham (UK).

Terry explaining something about the work of Martyn Pugh.

Work by Claire Denham-Smith (For Stephen Webster, right).

Work by Abigail Stradling.

Overview of the show.

As I always say when I come back from Birmingham, I love the place!
This has something to do with the jewellery tool shops there and I succumbed to temptation and bought a mini tube-bender:

Sorry about the photograph. I took it with my phone!

Been back in the workshop. The lovely Marvin made this piece:

Which reminded me of the skull-spoons I made some time ago from old spoons.

So I asked him if he would mind me making a version using a spoon. Of course, the whole thing grew legs and I had intended it to be finished by Hallowe'en but my stone dealer came to visit and she had some oddly-cut garnets which just had to be incorporated and so it won't be ready for Hallowe'en at all. Never mind.
This time, instead of cutting the spoons, I took a leaf from Marvin's book and chased the spoon into a skull form:

One dog-ugly silver teaspoon. A souvenir of Florida!

In pitch, ready to chase.

Chased and cut.

Finished and stone-set.

Te.Ta.Bu. Gallery, Genova

2011-10-25T21:45:00.000+01:00

While I was in Genova, I went to see the newest contemporary jewellery gallery in the town, Te.Ta.Bu., located in a back street near the castle gate in the ancient part of the city. Run by Camilla Teglio, Barbara Taramasso and Emanuela Burlando, this gallery aims to showcase the works of the makers as well as others.

The gallery is small and inviting and though it has no window display space, has made inventive use of the old inn in which it is housed, incorporating both workshop and gallery space.

The gallery is in both the upper section of the space next to the workshops and also in the basement, which used to be the wine-cellar.

Below, right to left, Camilla Teglio, Barbara Taramasso, János Gabor Varga, Me and Dingo.

Worth a visit if visiting the city in which there is very little contemporary jewellery on display.
(Though I did rather like this trashy lizard necklace, seen in a mainstream shop!)

campo ligure: wood and filigree

2011-10-24T21:39:00.003+01:00

I've just got back from a visit to Italy, to one of my favourite towns there, Genova, the mediaeval city clinging to the cliffs which plunge from the foothills of the alps to the sea. Just to the north of Genova, is the tiny town of Campo Ligure, which is reckoned to be the home of filigree. By this, I mean true filigree, not just "anything made from fine wires" which the word seems to have come to mean. As part of my visit to see my dear friend, János, we also took in some of the other amazing things the little town has to offer.

First up was the marvellous Giardino Tugnin, which is a set of enormous sculptures by a local butcher turned sculptor and which are carved directly from the stumps of hardwood trees, especially olive trees.

His work is a bizarre and wonderful mixture of mythology, Dante's Divine Comedy and portraits of local people:

After this, we went to the Filigree museum. Campo Ligure is supposed to have been the place where filigree was first made and a study has been done which shows that all filigree work around the world can be traced to this town.

Now, I am not a big fan of filigree - though visiting the museum and the workshop later did give me some ideas of things I might now try - but it was interesting to see a collection of it. I've only posted a few pictures here but there are more. Clicking on one of the pictures will take you to Flickr to see the rest.

"Filigree" the word comes from the Italian words for "wire" and "seed" and it is traditionally made from twisted wires which are then flattened.

For me, the most impressive pieces are the ones which combine filigree with other techniques, such as this plique-a-jour enamel goblet. The museum is very modern, bright and well-organised, with the different styles divided up into countries and regions.

Some of the work is nothing short of vulgar!

And some is of very great refinement

After visiting the museum, we went to visit Franca Bonegra, one of the last remaining filigranists in the town. She was trained as a child and can remember her whole family working in the workshop at the back of her tiny shop from which she still works and sells.

Franca's bench.

Partially-completed works.

Various elements waiting to be soldered. These are the basic elements into which the filigree scrolls are placed.

Decorative granules.

Wire drawbench and forming bench.

The special solder and flux mixture which is used to bind the elements together. This solder is a rather low-grade and therefore low-melting point solder. It is powdered and then mixed with borax and "aqua verde". None of us were quite sure what "aqua verde" actually is. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Franca making the little scrolls to go into the "scaffold".

Soldering by moving the board under the flame, not the flame over the board, as most jewellers do. TO the left is a bottle of "aqua verde", looking horribly like "Mountain Dew"!

The filligranist makes the wires using an ancient and non-standard steel guide which her grandfather used. All his patterns are marked out in measurements taken from this guide.

Finished filigree works for sale and export in the shop.

Traditional designs in the shop.

It is really sad that this skill is being lost. Franca had taught her son to make this sort of work but he has moved to Genova to manage a food shop there. It pays more.

waiting and waiting

2011-10-13T20:29:00.000+01:00

It's been a week where I've not been able to proceed as I am waiting for other people to do things, thus Fashion:Victim is waiting for a piece of jet to be carved and Future Legend is waiting for some fresh acrylic enamels to be delivered. Instead of working on those, I've spent the last few days dusting off half-completed projects and finishing them, largely to restock my Etsy shop.

Some of the completed pieces:

A kinetic ring made from a lump of cast-iron found in the street and a piece of iron gas-pipe. The whole top section revolves around the stone and is perfect for fiddling with! I've no idea what that top piece could have been used for.

Another simple ring made from a found, corroded iron nut, which has been smoothed out inside and set with six garnets. The garnets are set directly into the iron.

Over the weekend, a friend of mine gave me this wrecked bolt which he found lying on the harbour at Ramsay, Isle of Man and it was immediately made into this ring, set with citrines.

Almost immediately we set foot in Pittsburgh over the summer, Dingo found this nail, which has been made into a pendant. I made the setting for the druzy AGES ago but then didn't use it.

Another piece which has been sitting in my "to do" tray for years. Actually years! Obsidian and a very brilliant quartz set on a corroded washer found in Glasgow.

Off to Italy next week, to Genova, where Dingo and I will be meeting with a very good friend who also works in found iron and who will be taking us to the new Museo della Filigrana, the Museum of Filligree, which he helped to set up. Quite apart from that, it is the season of WHITE TRUFFLES in North Italy, of which I am hoping to sample a few.

gloomy sunday

2011-10-09T20:54:00.001+01:00

It is cold and has done nothing but rain all weekend here so I spent the day at my engraving bench working on one of the elements for Future Legend. I'm fairly pleased with the way this came out as it is the first piece of scroll engraving I've designed and engraved myself all the way through:

This being finished, I can now design the other scroll elements for more weekends of engraving. It also doubles as a replacement moustache, should I lose mine:

acrylic mess

2011-10-07T18:34:00.001+01:00

It's funny how one thing going wrong can eclipse everything else which went right!
I've had that happen today. I picked up working on Future Legend again, having given it a break to get on with Fashion:Victim for a while. (Fashion:Victim is at an impasse as I am waiting for a jet carving to be made for it and for some stones to be sourced!)
Future Legend has been nearly completed for some time now, so it should be a matter of days - largely doing some engraving work - before it is finished and I constructed the base-plate on which the rest of the brooch will be assembled. This went according to plan:

On top of this will sit an engraved plate, currently on my engraving bench, and then there is to be a shield which should be "enamelled" with acrylic enamels, the same acrylic enamels which I have used many, many times before:

I have no idea what happened. The panel on the left should be an intense mid-blue and the panel on the top right a clear, deep red. Also, they are all full of bubbles. Probably the most annoying thing about this is that I now have to remove this incredibly tough resin and re-do the whole thing, possibly in real enamel, though the idea of firing transparent red onto cast silver does not exactly fill me with enthusiasm!

Other than that, I cleaned up the silver hawk-claw for Fashion:Victim and I'm very pleased with it:

I'm very pleased that the hollowing-out exercise worked properly. It means that the claw is light.
One of my ex-students sold me a rather nice 4.5 ct. rough diamond cube too:

So, in reality, far from a bad day!

a little bit burlesque...

2011-10-04T20:35:00.005+01:00

I left the workshop tonight, fully intending to spend the evening engraving but found, instead, that my bike had a puncture and, worse, that I had packed the wrong pump (Presta not Schrader) in my rucksack, so it took me almost twice as long to get home and now I have no time to engrave... Still, I've got the piece (a part of Future Legend) in the vice, ready for tomorrow, then I am going to have to patch my inner-tube. Bah!

The somewhat odd title of this entry comes from a smutty observation made in the workshop today when I was trying out the end-caps for the spheres which will make up the main sections of Fashion:Victim:

I can hear the salubrious saxophone in my head.
Fortunately, I'm fairly sure that these will look quite different when they're finished.

I've been frantically casting things for this project too. The "claws" for the outside of the sphere The Illusion of Freedom Buys The Power of Destruction are cast:

As are the containers which will hold the recycled rare-earth magnets (from old ultrasonic toothbrush heads) for the catches:

I also finished carving the falcon claw, which I am pretty pleased with, especially as it is hollow and will weigh around 30g when cast:

innocent when you dream

2011-09-30T20:19:00.002+01:00

I didn't really get a lot done today. Too busy dealing with other things and the students!
I did make a mould of the pewter hawk's foot, using a 2-part silicone rubber compound and making it into a 2-part mould by a very rough-and-ready technique:

I used this stuff before and it is surprising the way that a really terrible-looking mould can give a pretty good result. It hadn't fully cured at the end of the day today, so I'll not be able to try it until Monday.
Cast up some of the talons for The Illusion of Freedom Buys The Power of Destruction, one of the balls which will be part of Fashion:Victim:

Also drew up the layout for the sphere in Rhino:

Everyone at work has been laughing at this brilliant error of judgement seen in Sainsbury's by Russell Elder:

starry-eyed

2011-09-29T21:11:00.000+01:00

Starry-eyed!

It struck me today that I have been using a tip bench trick for ages now which I have selfishly not shared with anyone, not out of malice or self-interest, but simply because I use it so very regularly that it never entered my head until one of the students mentioned today how unusual it was. The idea originally came from another one of my students who asked me why there are no tube cutters for jewellery of the sort plumbers use to cut pipes. Her partner is a plumber and he gave me a plumber's tube cutter to try out. This is what I developed.

1) Mark out the length of tube required.

2) Use a plumber's "heavy duty mini-cutter":

3) Clamp the cutter onto the previously-marked line, ensuring that the line is directly under the cutting-wheel:

4) Rotate the tube in the device several times, tightening the clamp slightly each full turn. I don't use this tool to cut right through the tube as it tends to leave an outer bevelled edge and an inner flange which have to be dealt with:

5) This leaves a lovely, clean, deep groove which is absolutely straight all the way around the tube:

6) I then use a saw in a standard tube-cutting clamp to cut the tube off through the groove, rotating the tube as I cut:

This method allows for much more even cutting of tube, less sawblade breakages and fewer blades blunted by rubbing against the standard clamp. I've used it on very tiny tubing and although this clamp says it will go down to 1/8", I've managed to mark out tubing just over 2mm OD.

Didn't get much done today other than making the other hinge for the sphere:

And cutting out some stars for the "poles" of the spheres.

As I mentioned yesterday, I found a very interesting blog because the owner kindly emailed me to say that my ring made from the corroded hex-nut features on her Industrial page.

As she says on the front page of her blog,

All the cute and the precious have been found. All the kitties and puppies have homes. The candy colored, the eco-friendly, the hipsters of the handmade are all duly covered elsewhere. Here I will find the slightly odd, the darkly beautiful, the elegant and steamy pieces of goodness.

Very refreshing!

lots of stuff!

2011-09-28T21:14:00.004+01:00

Just back from a long weekend in Brighton.

All the usual nonsense! Charity shop hilarity in the form of sickening ceramics:

And Dingo getting in the way of the camera on purpose:

If you half-close your eyes, you can see that it is him.
I got a good chance to play with the new macro lens, which has really become a firm favourite as it is super-sharp (as it should be, being a Leica lens) and although it is not fast - at f2.8 - is incredibly flexible. I could see myself using only three lenses in the future: the 20mm f1.8 Panasonic Pancake, the 25mm f0.95 Voigtlander and the 45mm f2.8 Panasonic-Leica macro.

I have received two lovely emails today from people who have featured my work. One is on a site which selects what the owner believes to be the best of Etsy - and a quick look at her blog convinces me that she has excellent taste:

And the other is from a blog which is all about old Hillman cars, Paykan Hunter.

Back into the workshop for more on Fashion:Victim. Both the ball elements are nearly ready for development into finished pieces. The hinges are completely on one and the other has the main structural elements for the hinge in place - should be hinged tomorrow:

Additionally, I've been working on some cast elements for these, including the "talons":

And the little holders which will hold the recycled rare-earth magnets (from discarded ultrasonic toothbrush heads) for use as catches for the spheres:

These were drawn in Rhino and milled out for casting. You can't really see on this photograph, but the setting is shaped to conform to the radius of the spheres.

Next problem: how to model this life-sized pewter hawk's foot in hollow silver!

sign o' the times

2011-09-20T20:22:00.000+01:00

One of my students is so hard up just now that he is selling off his gemstones. Normally, I love buying gemstones, but this felt like I was doing something wrong. Still, I gave the (fair) prices asked, so nobody lost out. It is just sad that it has come to this. Hardly surprising as precious metal prices rocket, though I was amazed to see that silver was actually higher in 1980 than it is now, something I only just remember. It was 1980 when the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the market. Alas! this current price hike appears to be directly related to the price of gold and is unlikely to come crashing down again as it did last time. Adjusted for inflation, silver is still MUCH cheaper than it was then but that is little consolation.

Anyway, I am not an economist. The stones I bought were these two. First of all, a slightly-scuffed Zircon of a beautiful bright, blue-green colour, about 10 x 8 mm:

The scuffs are barely visible with the naked eye and there is a slight bi-colour effect on the stone, which is lovely. The second is this gigantic roughish emerald, about 20 x 16mm:

Again, the pits on the surface - this time a "feature" of the stone - are not visible to the naked eye.

Got a bit of work done on Fashion:Victim, starting in earnest on one of the two hanging elements for the bangle, this one The Illusion of Freedom Buys The Power of Destruction. Soldering these is a nightmare!

Gift Horse

2011-09-15T19:45:00.004+01:00

One of the other lecturers at work found this hammer in a cupboard in the engineering department:

It's a bit rough-and-ready, but I can easily dress it and make it into a decent raising hammer. I especially like the label on it:

Didn't get much done today as I was busy teaching the students the fundamentals of marking out, which tends to be pretty intense! Managed to get the hinge finished on the bangle for "Fashion:Victim" - the sticking-out elements are settings and will be cut back considerably - and started to make the threaded catch:

video of falconry bells

2011-09-14T20:27:00.000+01:00

I finished another bell today and made a video of how they sound.

Apart from that, I didn't do too much except make another corroded nut ring to see how it would sell on Etsy:

Set with a natural zircon. (A stone which I personally feel is much underrated.)

jingle bells

2011-09-13T20:49:00.001+01:00

Not that it is that time already, but after posting a request for information about bells on Crafthaus, I finally took on board the advice I was given and coupled it with snippets found trawling through online fora and made a falconry bell. It actually rings, looks the part and is probably light enough that it could actually be used for falconry though it is actually going to end up on my falconry-inspired "Fashion:Victim" piece.
In case anyone is interested in such matters, here is the progress of the bell from start to finish as there is precious little information out there and you never know when you might have to make a bell!

1) Cut some discs. These are about 30mm across and are made from 50/50 Copper/Silver shibuichi. I chose shibuichi as it is harder than sterling when worked:

2) Anneal and dome the discs into very deep domes. The falconry bell is also sometimes called an "acorn bell" on account of the shape. I think that it would probably still work if it were more spherical:

3) Even up the rough edges and mark the centre of one of them and drill a hole. On the other one, drill two diametrically opposed holes a little way up from the edge:

Some people advocate drilling the side holes when the bell is made but I found that needlessly difficult as it would have meant supporting and measuring a quasi-spherical object and drilling it, whilst it is the work of a moment to drill the hemisphere.

4) Make the clapper. I knew that the clapper should be free to move and that it should be hard. Some comments online suggested that a ball-bearing allowed to move free within the bell would be enough to make a sound, but I thought that a swinging clapper would be better. For a hard material, I cut a piece of tool steel from a blunt drill using a diamond disc:

5) Attach the clapper to a free-swinging support. I made a couple of these to see which worked best and this one with the third jump ring in the middle proved to be best. Soldering a jump ring onto the tool steel is a bit tricky, but I used enamelling solder and it works fine.

6) Secure the mechanism so that the outer bell hangs freely on the support of the clapper mechanism. This is a really tricky solder to do! I used a LOT of tipp-ex to stop everything sticking together.

The outer jump ring will be used to attach the bell to the final piece. It also prevents the clapper from falling inside the bell.

7) Solder the two halves together with the mechanism in place:

8) Pickle, clean and file, then mark out where the slot is going. At this stage, the bell doesn't ring, it just clicks a bit!

9) Cut the slot and create the holes at the end of the slot to relieve the stress points:

NOW it is ringing! A few more steps to go and the bell will be finished. Before I go on, here are a couple of failures:

Left: forgetting that shibuichi and hard solder have similar melting points. Right: Thinking, "I wonder if it would be louder if I made the slot bigger?". It wasn't. It stopped making any noise but a metallic clicking.

10) Barrel polish the bell and then give it a final manual polish. The barrel polishing hardens the whole thing up and the sound is better afterwards:

I did make a video of the thing ringing but for some reason, there was no sound on the video. I'll do it again tomorrow and post it then.

I also got a fair bit of work done on the bangle for this piece, setting the hinges, one of which will be the catch mechanism and making the support for the hanging elements (which will include the above bell):

friday feelings

2011-09-09T19:23:00.005+01:00

But not in a bad way.
I received an email from the editor of 18kt website today. The editor, Marta Sanchez, had just written an article on my excellent friend and colleague in Italy, János Gábor Varga and he recommended her to contact me, which was generous as well as flattering, so there will soon be an interview on the website.

Got quite a lot of work done on Fashion:Victim today, though it is all a bit slow-going as I'm having to wait until the middle of October for an element of the piece to be carved in Whitby jet by the marvellous Kevin Dixon at 105 Jet in Whitby (it is actually great to hear that he is so busy that he can't manage it until then: so many people are in exactly the opposite situation at the moment). Today, the settings were all affixed to the bangle and it was cut and the hinge begun:

Although I'm clear about the basic ideas for the piece and the drawings have been done, there are some practical aspects which are vexing; I wanted these tiny raptor claws made in sintered zirconium oxide, which is the material used for dental implants:

Unfortunately the lab I contacted couldn't make them hollow in the way I wanted, so I've had to think about making them in silver. I milled this one out today:

I'll cast this, then modify the casting, take a rubber and re-cast it so that I can cover the sphere with the tiny claws (unless I can find another lab to make the zirconia ones).

workshop update

2011-09-07T20:34:00.000+01:00

Been really busy with the new students, so I've not had much time to do my own work: annoying as I've loads of ideas I want to get to work on. Made some progress on Future Legend and Fashion:Victim...

Stones and settings for Future Legend.

This last piece is an iron and silver bangle with half the settings now in place. Ultimately, it will be hinged.

Nuts about Nuts

2011-09-02T19:04:00.000+01:00

Fairly easy day today. Spent the morning in the workshop and the afternoon with my students with learning difficulties, all of whom have studied with me before: gratifying to know that they wanted to come back again! A lovely group to end the week with, I think.The workshop is proving a little bit frustrating at the moment, as I am between several projects, all of which need some serious time spent working through the details on paper, or 3D models need to be made or I am waiting for suppliers to get back to me about parts of projects, so I made a simple ring today as a kind of "back to basics" refreshment, reminding me of the sort of pieces which started the whole scrap iron thing with me:

A corroded nut - found in the street - and a rhodolite garnet. No precious metal at all. I just filed the threads out of the nut and flush-set a 6mm rhodolite upside-down in it. Very pleasing to make and surprisingly comfortable to wear.I also got a package of materials from my friend Elizabeth in Pittsburgh:

The wonderful coloured glass is scrap from the now-defunct but incredibly-named Youghiogheny Glass Company. I don't even know how to pronounce that!

troll time

2011-08-31T20:57:00.001+01:00

Well, the students are back and their usual daft fun has begun. I came into the workshop today to find this on my benchpeg:

A present from Sweden. Unfortunately, the new students who don't quite have the same casual attitude to being in college found this very odd indeed!

Got a few more cast elements made today for Fashion:Victim and Future Legend:

The skulls in the first photograph are going to be magnetic catches. I made them by cutting and adding wax to my existing production Skull Ring model.

too much to do

2011-08-30T18:49:00.000+01:00

Just back from another weekend at the Edinburgh Festival and a whole new raft of students who arrived on Monday, eager to learn. Always a bit daunting, but after the first full day in the workshop, making a simple polished brass ring (!), they mostly seemed pleased. Long may it continue.

Festival fun, as ever, with a series of events I didn't plan to go to. Started on Friday night with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment playing some music I had very mixed feelings about: Weber's "Freischutz" Overture, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Liszt's "Faust Symphony". I love the Liszt, have heard the Weber too many times and am completely cold on the Mendelssohn, or should say "was completely cold"... As with everything that orchestra touches - their Beethoven 9 is a revelation - the lightness and openness of their approach makes everything so very fresh and this concert was no exception. The Liszt, of course, was phenomenal but the real surprise to me was the Mendelssohn, a composer I've never much been interested in before. The violin - played by Alina Ibragimova - was given incredible clarity and presence, as opposed to the muddiness I've heard in performances on the radio and on CD.

On the way out of this concert, I was given a flyer for another concert, this time of unaccompanied choral music by Debussy, Dvorak and Szymanowski, held in the wonderful "Old St Paul's" church just off the high street in the oldest part of the town. A very odd place indeed, it feels like it is underground, which it is, partially:

The chorus were brilliant and the music perfect for the surroundings. An oddity about the concert was that it was advertised as a "Hot Chocolate" concert and we all got a cup of a kind of thick, melted chocolate when we went in, much needed on a cold and wet Edinburgh evening (even in August!).

On Saturday, I took in the exhibition of work at the Ingleby Gallery, asking the question "Mystics or Rationalists", a patchy exhibition with the outstanding highlights of pieces by Cornelia Parker and this incredible piece by Susan Collis, "You Again":

Which may look like a pile of building waste, but which, in fact, is carefully constructed from exotic woods, rare pigments and precious metals. Definitely my favourite piece in the show!

I revisited the newly-refurbished National Museum of Scotland again, to find that "newly refurbished" can be read as "dumbed down". Another museum bites the dust as push-button gratification replaces the encouragement of genuine curiosity. Tucked away at the back, I did find a couple of interesting pieces which I hadn't previously noticed, a rather excellent archery medal and some silver dog collars which were given as a prize in a dog race:

These relate directly to something on my bench at the moment.

The afternoon was taken up by one of the most dreadful theatrical experiences that I can remember, "Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage". Where to begin? Take the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf and remove the sensitivity to language, remove the poetry and replace it with undergraduate pub ramblings of pointlessly repeated text and needless "dirty words", make Grendel a thuggish, drunken lout (he actually drinks beer and showers the audience with it), make Beowulf a crusty neo-hippy with terrible B.O. (he actually stank), add relentlessly naff songs played at high volume and wrap it all up in a pretentious veneer mocking academia and you have some idea of how appalling this piece actually is. I left after 25 minutes and the friends with whom I was attending wished that they had left then too, as it got no better. Dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. £14 down the drain.

The evening was saved, however, by the concert I went to in the evening in St Cuthbert's Church, one of the oldest churches in Edinburgh and also one of the oddest, being the most Italianate and fanciful of any Scottish Presbyterian church I've ever been in, with gilding and angels and an enormous alabaster "Last Supper":

A concert of music for Baroque and Renaissance guitar and theorbo, given by the excellent Gordon Ferries, an hour and a half of quiet, reflective beauty, a million miles from the horrors of Beowulf!

Like so many amazing things at the Edinburgh Festival, this concert was "free", a donation was all that was asked and nobody minds paying for ninety minutes' worth of superlative entertainment.

Sadly, all over for another year.

back at the bench

2011-08-24T19:29:00.002+01:00

It is so good to finally be back at the bench and working on things again. I managed to get quite a lot done on two projects, cutting open the iron balls that will become "Fashion:Victim - In Memoriam ALMcQ"

And also getting some bits and pieces together for "Future Legend", a brooch/pendant based on the David Bowie song of the same name

The dog is 9ct gold and was cast from a toy dog. Schleich toy animals are just the BEST!

magical!

2011-08-23T21:31:00.000+01:00

Went to see Ravi Shankar at the Edinburgh Festival last night. Quite the best gig I have ever been to. He was amazing. I am so pleased to have been able to see him perform live, rather than just hearing his work from recordings.

A photograph of the band tuning up with Ravi Shankar in the middle.
I'm actually at a loss to explain how good this was. I left physically shaking with excitement and walked home grinning like a loon.

Back in the workshop today and back to work on things. I've had an idea for a piece using some iron balls I found in a burnt-out warehouse in Kent four years ago:

The balls are about 100mm across and hollow.

I've been inspired by the Alexander McQueen show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which we visited, and the piece will be a bit of a tribute to him.

Got round to dealing with some of the things I found or bought during the summer, including things found in Pittsburgh, stones from my stone-dealer and the stuff I bought in Evolution in NYC:

Festival Time Again

2011-08-21T22:16:00.000+01:00

Still not really settled since returning to Scotland. From getting in on Friday, I had to go to work for half a day and then headed off to again to Edinburgh, from where I've just returned, having enjoyed the festival madness there. In short, went to see the Yogyakarta Court Gamelan, which was phenomenal, the David Mach show at the City Art Gallery and wandered around the High Street and the West End Craft fair.

Met up with Uncle Clive:

And got my usual tour backstage at the Tattoo. Also got onto the gantries above the castle, which is great fun:

The David Mach exhibition of works based on verses from the King James Bible is rather good, though I am not wholly convinced by the collages. They do work individually - for me anyway - and have a real sense of Bosch about them, but there are almost too many of them to be able to view them properly and, ultimately, they all start to seem a bit "samey". At £5 to get in, it is not an exhibition which one can return to regularly either.
A real bonus is the ability to access the studio where he has been creating the works and to see some of his older works and also the way in which he researches and makes the collages.
On the whole, I still prefer his sculptural works - of which there are all too few - though those which are there are magnificent:

As ever, made from the unlikely common object, in this case, wire coat-hangers.

During the day, I went to the genteel "West End Craft Fair", which is usually mediocre with one or two examples of interesting work. It was especially annoying this year as there were an unusually large number of BEADERS describing themselves as JEWELLERS, which they are not. (This is not up for debate: as a jeweller, I am stating this as fact.) Unfortunately, the interesting makers were all the same ones from last year - with one exception, to follow - and there were rather too many poor-quality or done-to-death products on sale. I did, however, meet with the lovely Josean Garcia, who is an Edinburgh College of Art trained glass blower now working in Venice for Murano and in his own studio making the most beautiful mouth-blown beads, which I really want to use, though I'm not yet sure how:

The gamelan music in the evening was utterly superb. I used to play in a gamelan in Glasgow, many, many years ago (now, like everything else decent and interesting in this town, defunct) and the appeal of the music is strong. I played in a Balinese orchestra, which is much gentler than the Javanese orchestra which I heard last night and it was utterly thrilling to hear these bolder instruments first-hand.
As a metalsmith, these instruments are so very appealing:

I was also introduced to Javanese dancing, which I had never seen before. This guy was just phenomenal:

I really wanted to see him perform more: his physical control was quite unbelievable and he was a most engaging performer. The musicias were all of the highest abilities and the woman shown at in the photograph below has an amazing voice:

Top tip for eating out in Edinburgh!
The Malaysian restaurant Kampung Ali in Fountainbridge. It is exactly the same as the legendary "Malaysian Delight" on Nicholson Street but big enough to get lots more people in. (Having said that, they were turning people away by the time I had eaten.)

Achar, boiled rice, Spicy tofu with cabbage, mango bubble tea:

In Leeds

2011-08-17T22:08:00.000+01:00

In Leeds, Yorkshire, for a training course in using Gemvision's "Matrix" software for jewellery design. Matrix is a kind of super-sophisticated overlay for Rhino, which is aimed squarely at the commercial and retail markets but which has enormous potential for the less traditional maker too, having tools which allow the laying out of pave settings on any shape, the ability to calculate how many stones of a given size it would take to fill any given space, and many other procedures which jewellers find tiresome to do manually.
The programme also has a phenomenally well-conceived rendering engine based on V-ray, which gives excellent renders at very high speed in surprisingly short periods of time.
Although I would never make the pieces shown below, these rings were made start-to-finished render in about ten minutes:

The package is expensive, but is almost certainly of use to people who work with this sort of very high-end work, or with volume work. I can imagine using it in conjunction with Rhino, swapping between the two, rather as I already do between Rhino and Inkscape.

moral bankruptcy

2011-08-13T13:15:00.001+01:00

I don't normally post political notes on here, but thought that everyone interested in the disaster that is the UK might like to have a look at this article in one of our most "establishment" newspapers, The Daily Telegraph. It very elegantly sums up so much of my own thinking on what is rotten in the state of Britain:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

more entertaining than a riot

2011-08-09T23:58:00.000+01:00

People in Brighton have much better things to entertain them:

erratum

2011-08-08T13:20:00.000+01:00

Further to my last post, please note that I confused two pieces in my head! Kevin Coates made a Magpie Brooch which was shown at Goldsmiths': the Magpie Neckpiece to which I referred was by Charlotte de Syllas. Apologies to both makers.

The neckpiece can be seen on her website: http://www.charlottedesyllas.com/

Time Regained

2011-08-04T14:34:00.001+01:00

Just back from the incredible exhibition of work by neo-Renaissance artist-goldsmith, Kevin Coates, Time Regained at The Wallace Collection in London. I love Coates' work and have done since I saw his Magpie Brooch at Goldsmiths' Hall some time in the early 1990s, so it was an absolute joy to be able to view a large selection of his works, some older along with 12 new Penumbrae, which make up the main part of the exhibition.

Overview of the selection of older works by Kevin Coates.

Detail of Penumbra 10: Hundred-Sunned Phenix.

Well worth a visit, as is the Wallace Collection in general. Of especial interest is the collection of arms and armour:

US Visit Part Two

2011-08-04T13:59:00.000+01:00

As discussed in the previous post, the recent break took us to New York City as well as other places. I'm probably going to annoy a good number of people with this comment, but both Dingo and I much preferred Pittsburgh to NYC!

In NYC, we met up with Stevie B and his partner Tabitha and spent a lovely day with them at the Museum of Arts and Design, followed by lunch and a walk in Central Park. The exhibition at MAD was the highly engaging "Otherworldly", which is an exhibition of miniature artworks:

I especially liked the miniature Jackson Pollock:

We also spent ages looking through the jewellery collection in the museum. I was especially pleased to see a piece which I have previously only seen in photographs and which was very influential on me in my own development, Richard Mawdsley's belt buckle:

The rest of our New York visit was largely taken up by three - yes, three! - visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at the armour, the mediaeval collection and the Alexander McQueen show, all of which were brilliant and which I could have spent hours more looking over.

We were also taken by my friend, Michael - who is not a jeweller - to the Brooklyn Flea Market. Here is Dingo with Michael's son, Patrick and a vintage, talking Bugs Bunny!

We also visited Evolution in SoHo, where I bought some oddities to incorporate in future works. A marvellous place, with lovely staff - a change from the usual corporate polite disinterest we encountered in most of NYC - and loads of fascinating "stuff":

There are more photographs of the New York visit on Flickr, including the touristy snaps, such as those from the top of the Empire State Building!

As mentioned before, Pittsburgh was by far the more appealing of the two cities we visited. This may have been to do with the fact that I knew more people there but the place seemed much friendlier and much more relaxed (and also far less busy) than New York. It seemed that everywhere we went, people stopped to talk to us; from the couple on the bus who randomly asked me to fix their camera on the grounds that I had a camera and therefore "knew about cameras" to the two lovely older ladies whom we met in a lift and ended up talking to for half-an-hour, our experiences in Pittsburgh were wholly positive. In fact, the only thing I could complain about in Pittsburgh is the less-than-ideal public transport system...

Pittsburgh, being an old steel-producing town, is the sort of place I love. Like Sheffield in the UK, it is a lovely combination of run-down old buildings, ultra-modern buildings, down-to-earth people, university students and artists, unpretentious and open and I am delighted at the prospect of returning next year to work at the SCC again.

Highlights of Pittsburgh included a visit to the marvellous architectural salvage centre, Construction Junction:

Where I bought a box of Formica samples and some rusty nails, though could easily have bought MUCH more if I could have thought on a way of getting it home! I'm hoping that one of the projects I will do next year at the SCC will involve taking the participants to Construction Junction.

Also, we spent a day at the audacious "Catherdral Of Learning" at Pittsburgh University:

A whole day was spent in the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History (we were thrown out at 5pm!):

Also worth seeing is the largest collection of holy relics in the world at the very beautiful St. Anthony's Chapel. It is quite hard to get to this place and it is only open for a few hours per week, but is absolutely remarkable:

This was where we went in, followed by a family. The family spent about 10 minutes looking round and left. We spent another three-quarters of an hour there and left. I wanted to get a book about the place, so we crossed the road to the gift-shop... the family were still there, having spent more of the visit in the gift shop than in the church!
The gift shop was, unfortunately, hilarious:

I say "unfortunately" because it was very small, so we couldn't laugh. The family were still there after I bought the book, unable to decide on what "Car Visor Clip" they wanted to buy.

One of the things I really wanted to do was to look around some of the derelict industrial sites surrounding the city. This didn't happen as planned, but my friend Elizabeth - another of the few non-jewellers I know in the USA - took us to the derelict care-home for the widows of veterans:

I have to thank Elizabeth, her partner, Kirk, and their family for their support and hospitality: indeed, without their support, I wouldn't have been in Pittsburgh at all. It was a connection through Kirk to the director of the SCC, Janet McCall, that got me my engagement to teach there.
Thanks also go out to everyone else who made our visit so excellent, including the people who turned up to hear my talk - Adrienne and Sharon especially - and our host, Julie, who went out of her way to make our stay at her B&B pleasurable experience. I can recommend her accommodations at Briarwood Manor to anyone!

One last image. My favourite shot of the whole trip:

Children playing in the fountains at the Philip Johnson-designed Pittsburgh Plate Glass Plaza.

Back in the UK: USA Part One

2011-08-02T23:53:00.000+01:00

At last! A moment in this mad summer break to get a few words down about what I've been doing. Some of you will already know that I spent the last three weeks in the USA, visiting New York, Pittsburgh, Erie and Edinboro, which was quite easily the most productive and fun break I've had in weeks. Not so sure that Dingo appreciated being drafted in as my PA, though!

It all kicked off with a talk at the Society for Contemporary Craft and general networking with Sherrard and the excellent people who work there. The place is absolutely excellent and well worth a visit when in Pittsburgh. The visit was set up by my friend Elizabeth, to whom I am much indebted for not only making this introduction, but also for her wonderful hospitality while we were in the city. (Photographs of what we got up to with her in future blog entries!)

While there, I was introduced to the wonderful work of Mariko Kusimoto, work of which I wasn't really fully aware previously. She makes phenomenally complex box-structures which house many, many elements which can all be removed from the box and worn as jewellery:

At the end of the first week in Pittsburgh, Dingo and I met up with our lovely editor and powerhouse, Brigitte, to go on the Pittsburgh "art crawl", which is a monthly event in which many artists and galleries open up to the public, serving drinks and generally having a lot of fun.

We travelled in style, as this picture by Brigitte shows...

Brigitte jumped in a moment later and the poor lad had to pedal for three of us!
After, it was dinner at the marvellous Church Brew House with other Pittsburgh metalsmiths, Glen Gardner, Thomas Mullen and Brian Ferrell.

Dingo and Brigitte ponder one of Glen's printed-metal rings.
More general photographs of Pittsburgh can be seen here.

Later in the break, we hooked up with Sue Amendolara and went to Erie, where she quite unbelievably managed to get us unlimited access to the fantastic art-deco Warner Theatre in the town.

More photographs of the visit can be seen by clicking the photograph above.

We then went to Edinboro, where I gave a talk on Electrolytic Etching, with a demonstration of how easily the process could be done with recycled mobile phone chargers!

After the demonstration, we all went back to Sue's house for a party, which was lovely. Especially lovely was the cake made by her delightful daughter, Leah and her friend Maeve:

A tribute to my pig earring!

End of Part One. More tomorrow.

end of term

2011-06-30T18:00:00.000+01:00

Well, that is the college work over for another year and time to think about the holidays!

The Society for Contemporary Craft blog has a little article on it about my work which made me laugh.

winding down

2011-06-22T19:46:00.000+01:00

It's the end of term now and the students are all on their way. I've finished off "A Forest" and have been tidying up the workshops. On Monday, I went through to Edinburgh for an exceptionally rapid visit to see Sue Amendolara who is having a holiday here and which has resulted in me returning the visit to see her in Edinboro when I'm in Pennsylvania. All good!

I've been working on the box for "A Forest", which is an old cutlery box I found at the flea-market. It was full of cutlery which, fortunately, is both attractive and in good condition, so it is now in my kitchen drawers as the box is on my workbench:

This is the box just after I scraped a lot of the crud off the surface. There is a horrible varnish stuff on it, which is flaking off in patches and which nothing seems to move. I don't want to use paint-stripper on it as that is such a horrible material that I try to never use it if I can.
Eventually, I used a lot of coarse and fine steel wool to move the worst of it, then covered it with beeswax:

It is absorbing a LOT of beeswax! This is it after about five coats, allowing each coat to dry between. You can see the right side of the box isn't nearly coated enough yet. I like the scuffed look caused by the uneven soaking of the varnish into the wood.

The plaque on the top has lettering very similar to that on the pendant itself and I used the "girl" that I cut too big earlier in the project!

Other than that, I've started in a casual way on the next project, "Future Legend", based on the Bowie song of the same name. I say "casual" as I know that there is no way this will be progressing at all before I break for the summer:

pretentiousness everywhere

2011-06-22T18:26:00.001+01:00

I've just read this ludicrous article in which a company which I view as merely purveyors of bland mediocrity to those with more money than sense, Ralph Lauren, have decided to sue the management agency which owns the building in which their glasgow shop is housed on the grounds that the agency has allowed a hairdressing salon to open up there. Apparently, this hairdressing salon is simply not the sort of business they want to have in the block with them.
This begs the question, if they are that high-class, why did they open a shop in violent, drunken ned-ridden glasgow?
Given the locale, they are lucky that it wasn't a Greggs, Poundland or a charity shop which opened up next to them.

On a similar tip, I was verbally abused today by a blonde fake-tanned scumbag behind the wheel - I hesitate to say "driving" - of a crappy little bottom-of-the-range Porsche (she was probably wearing Ralph Lauren, but I didn't look too hard).
What caused her to lean out of the car and scream like a harpy? To swear like a sailor? What provoked this outpouring of crude opprobrium?
It seems that she believes that the green boxes at traffic lights with a big white bike painted in them are not, in fact, to be used by bikes. It also seems that I don't pay any taxes and have no right to be on the road. Furthermore, if she ever sees me again, I had "better watch out", which strikes me as a direct threat and thus actionable... Perhaps her very memorable private plates weren't such a good idea after all?

Both of these incidents strike me as examples of the utterly vacuous pretentiousness into which Britain has sunk. Apart from the price, what is the difference between Ralph Lauren and Primark? Both are "labels", both are multiple retaillers, both are selling mass-market clothes. And at what point did behaviour which can only be described as "common" become the norm for people who drive a Porsche?
It all boils down to the same thing: belief in money without any moral dimension.

completion

2011-06-16T19:44:00.002+01:00

Today was a bit of a surprise as I managed to finish "A Forest"! Yesterday, it seemed as if I still had loads of work to do to complete it, but it was finished by lunchtime, leaving me the pleasurable business of cleaning up my bench.

As you can see, it is on quite a large scale. It's large but not too heavy, though running anywhere might be a bit uncomfortable...

What is not apparent here is that the piece is "glazed" with a piece of very beautiful Victorian bevelled glass. The glass has tiny flaws in it.

Setting the glass was an absolutely scarifying experience. The bezel is made from fine silver and I deeply undercut it and used the handle of a nylon toothbrush to push it over, but it still had me sweating, especially as the glass is very high RI, which makes me think it is probably very soft too.

I'm very pleased with the way that the top section came out, the lettering and the skull of the green man:

There are more photographs here:

And the sketchbooks are here:

adorn

2011-06-16T18:22:00.000+01:00

As if my students aren't busy enough, they have landed a show at the Mackintosh Church in Glasgow. Anyone who is interested is welcome to attend. The collection consists of fine jewellery made using new technologies:

eleven days

2011-06-14T21:23:00.002+01:00

Since I last worked on "A Forest". The whirl of the degree shows has passed and I finally got back to the bench today. Before I put the degree shows completely behind me, anyone interested in seeing the work produced by my own students can look backwards through my Flickr photostream from here:

(Click on the photograph to go to Flickr and see more.)

So, back to my own bench and my own work and I hadn't quite taken stock of how far "A Forest" had come since I last worked on it. The chain is now completely set and finished:

The last two photographs show the back of the chain with the amber acorn detail and the little funnel which can be used for filling the perfume container which will be in the main pendant. The amber was carved from one of a number of lumps given to me years ago by a student who had collected it on a beach somewhere. It is not at all transparent, but I really like the streaky, opaque qualities of it.

I also managed to assemble and colour (patinate) the inner box:

And have completed the manufacture of the perfume bottle and the tray which will hold it in the main body of the pendant:

In short, a very satisfying day!

givin' up, givin' in...

2011-06-12T22:33:00.000+01:00

Three degree shows in two days!
First up was the show at Glasgow School of Art, being held for the last time in the Newberry Tower building at GSA after 40 years of being the home of the department. Much as I really like the building, this show showed all-too-clearly why it was time to move: 19 people in one dark space. It didn't really work very well. Not to let that detract from the work. In a way, I am quite sad about the demise of this building as I really rather like it, but brutalism is SO unfashionable...

Anyway, enough of my moaning.
The show was much bigger than usual but was jammed into the same space which I have seen used for seven graduates; it meant that there was no room for the students to display notebooks or development materials, which was something I really missed. One of the pleasures of these events for me is talking to fellow jewellers about the way in which they work. Additionally, it meant that each student had less space for their jewellery and there were WAY more people at the opening than there would be normally.

Also, for some reason, the lighting wasn't very good.
As ever, however, the show was a fine mix of styles and materials and there was a very interesting tendency for work to be enamelled. The outstanding pieces for me were works by this person:

(To my shame, I have completely failed to make a note of who made this work, but I will correct that later in the week!) All this work is based on writings by various philosophers and has a deeply alchemical streak which appeals greatly to me.
I also really liked the colourful work of Shao Lianchao:

Samera Afzi was making work which was both interesting and almost "mainstream" commercial; we chatted at length about her work and I'm sure that she will do well:

And because it is very much in my own favourite materials, it was lovely to see the work of Sean McGugan, using steel in various forms, etched and laser-welded:

Next night it was the turn of my own students to present their degree work. This was a nerve-wracking experience for me (how much worse for the students?!) as this was the first year we had taught the degree programme "BA (Hons) Jewellery Design and Technology" and it is a programme which nobody else in the UK is really teaching, largely CAD-based. I'm pleased to report that things went very well and there was a great deal of interest from the press and galleries, a couple of the students even sold collections, which is very gratifying. What is not so pleasing is that I largely forgot to photograph the work and only photographed the people attending the show... Here is our principal opening the show:

Some people milling about at the show:

And one pendant by Hanyao Fu:

I actually can't believe that I forgot to photograph the work! I'll get those photographed and posted later in the week.

Last of all, on Saturday, I got myself along to the Edinburgh College of Art Degree show, which was very different from ours or from Glasgow's, as it should be.

The Edinburgh display space was very cosy and relaxed, full of work but not cluttered and the works were all very pleasingly dissimilar, though there was a lot of laser-cut materials incorporated into the works. About eight years ago, I never wanted to see another laser-cut piece again, but now that the technology has been assimilated and is no-longer-new, it is great to see how people are using it in their practice. I spoke extensively to Kirsty Fraser about her work, which uses a lot of laser-cut elements to evoke architectural forms:

I also really liked the works of Mariko Sumioko which rather eloquently tie together European "art jewellery" modes with Japanese traditions:

I especially liked her tray of little brooches which were for sale, tiny fragments of her larger works:

My overall favourite works, however, were these amazing vessels by Hazel Thorn:

The work of all the students - bar one - is available on my Flickr photostream, which you can access by clicking on any one of the pictures above.
Why "bar one"?
One of the main functions of a degree show, quite apart from it being cathartic, is for students to get themselves noticed, to make an impression and - with any luck - to start making a name for themselves. It was therefore somewhat surprising that one snarky student at the Glasgow School of Art degree show not only forbade me from taking photographs of her work but also quite clearly stated that she didn't want her work to appear on my blogs or on the ACJ website.
Only too happy to oblige.

As usual, a trip to Edinburgh means that I end up making too many appointments to see people, decide to visit too many galleries and spend too long browsing second-hand bookshops. One of the most interesting exhibitions is Sandy Noble's "Lazy Eye" show at Framed Gallery in which he has built drawing machines; robots which make drawings, complete with all the flaws and mannerisms that one expects of human drawings. These are process pieces, but they have a strange fragility. Well worth a visit:

Sandy and the gallery owners at Framed.

One of the robots making a drawing. This is drawing directly onto the wall of the gallery.

Some of the smaller drawings, completed.

getting frazzled...

2011-06-09T21:47:00.000+01:00

SO, my degree students have now all been graded and are awaiting their results after four non-stop days of marking, external exams and exam boards. Their degree show is tomorrow night and I am looking forward to that immensely. Unfortunately, it means that we've slightly neglected our other students and I forgot to mention that the HND, HNC and NQ students have been working hard to get their own entries ready for the prestigious Glasgow-wide competition run by the venerable Trades House of Glasgow.

Here are some photographs of their work:

The Trades Hall is a lovely building, but it is not really suitable for the exhibition of the work which they very generously sponsor. This overview of the display shows that the jewellery is not, perhaps, shown to best advantage. However, that is not in any way to detract from the fact that this is a fantastic competition and very, very popular with the students and general public, covering not only jewellery but fashion, furniture-making, photography, stained-glass and a wealth of other craft subjects.

Unfortunately, my favourite piece didn't come out in this photograph, Marie Gideonsson's marvellous silver, sea-glass, feather and tourmaline brooch. I'll aim to get another photograph when it is returned next week. Left, kinetic pendant by Cate McColl and right, kinetic pendant by Sinéad Gow, another lovely piece. These pieces are all by my first-year students, as is the next piece (which also won a prize), the pendant and earring set by Margo Shaw:

On the left is a pendant by Arturo Lopez, also in the first year.

Jay McLean made this Crazy Squid pendant, which didn't win a prize but should have:

Jay is on our HND programme and will be coming back for the degree next year, as will Alexs McIlwraith who made this lovely clock:

Last but not least is the Sgian-dubh by Elaine McKay - also and HND student, returning next year for the degree - made from silver, a scottish agate, damascus steel and bog oak:

I rather foolishly forgot to photograph the other prize we won, the "Advanced Jewellery" category, won by Imogen Doherty, but I will post that next week when the prizes come back.
After a flying visit to this show, it was off to Glasgow School of Art For their degree show but I will post that tomorrow as I can't be bothered editing all the photographs just now!

preview

2011-06-08T21:06:00.002+01:00

The students on my new BA (Hons) Jewellery Design and Technology all set up their shows yesterday and it was being assessed today by the external examiner. This is the first year we've offered the BA programme and I was very nervous about it; it was also very, very tiring.
Overall, the show looks great. I'm very pleased with what the students have done, and I am absolutely delighted with the way that a couple of them have pleasantly surprised us with their work. Because the students don't yet have their results - and won't have until after tomorrow's marathon exam-board meeting - I can't show you any photographs of their shows, but I can show you these pictures of some of my favourite pieces which they have produced over the year!
The degree is quite unique in that we are offering a programme which specialises in the production of "fine" jewellery using new technologies...

We can start off with my favourite piece by any of the students in the whole year:

This ring was made by fellow Crafthaus member, Iain Baird and is not wholly typical of his usual work. It was made using and SLA system to create a model which was then cast by direct burnout.

Louise McNeely created this fantastic ring by milling out wax models directly from a block of wax, casting it in gold and then setting it with black diamonds:

Ishbel Watson used the same techniques to make a whole series of pieces based on optical illusions, highly successfully, I think:

And Nadia Baptie produced this ring using the SLA/direct burnout process:

The central stone has come out very dark in this photograph, but is actually a very strong blue tanzanite.

I'll post more photographs on Friday when the show opens to the public.

work by others

2011-06-07T19:03:00.002+01:00

There has been absolutely no update on my work on "A Forest" for the last two days as I've been locked away marking the work of our BA students. It is quite tiring and very intense, especially as this is the first year that I've taught on a degree-level course. I'm sure it gets easier... !
I'll be posting photographs of their show later in the week and if anyone is in Glasgow on Friday night, please come along from 7 - 9pm to North Glasgow College and have a look.

I had a delivery today of a book which I have been very excited about seeing: Nicolas Estrada's "New Rings" book, published in English by the venerable Thames and Hudson. Not had much time to read it, but it is looking to be full to bursting with brilliant jewellery. I should also say that my own "Four Cocktail Rings Of The Apocalypse" feature in it too.

There is more about this book on Amazon.

re-focus

2011-06-03T21:58:00.000+01:00

After the confusion of earlier this week, everything snapped back into focus today in the workshop when I actually completed a part of "A Forest". The chain is now completely constructed and only requires to be set, which I started doing before I had to leave for the thrilling enterprise of going to the bank and the post-office. At least I had a bike ride in lovely weather.

The cast elements of the chain put together.

Constructed, polished and partially set. The funnel at the top is detachable and is for filling the perfume flask which will be inside the main part of the pendant.

Set with nephrite jade, garnet and citrine. Each link is set on both sides.

I also managed to pre-polish part of the main box - a terrifying experience: I hate polishing large pieces. Here is the lettering in place on the box. It will be "enamelled" with acrylic:

Unfortunately, the leafy wreath which was supposed to be going around the skull in the centre did fall victim to the polishing machine, making me think on a new way to attach it!

Non-stop

2011-06-01T21:21:00.000+01:00

ACJ at Treasure
As part of the prestigious London Jewellery Week, the ACJ is proud to be represented at Treasure, part of the week which is dedicated to contemporary jewellery from all sorts of people.

You can visit the Treasure Website here, see who is exhibiting or have a look at the ACJ entry.
I'm delighted to say that there is a very wide range of styles being shown on the ACJ website and recommend anyone who is in the area to pay a visit!

Skull Appreciation
I was delighted to be featured on the Skull Appreciation Day Mail Art blog! I had completely forgotten that I sent this postcard away to it. For all skull fans, this and also the marvellous Skull-A-Day are essential reading.

A Forest, Confusing
I've reached an unusual stage in the development of "A Forest" where I've actually managed to lose focus of what I am supposed to be doing, there are almost too many elements for me to keep track of. Today's work:

Made the funnel for the perfume bottle, cut and carved the hooks which will connect the pendant to the chain and also carved the lettering for the top of the "theatre" piece of the pendant. The link in the top right is the master of the chain link.

The chain links all cast up. I made the waxes of these yesterday. Each one will be set on both sides with garnet, citrine or nephrite cabochons.

This is the mechanism on the back which will hold and lock the perfume container in place.

The "mossy mound" - which will hold the ceramic mushrooms - is now enamelled with granular vitreous enamel. The pieces shown behind are the tray-support for the perfume container and the "ground plane" for inside the box.

It is mayhem in the workshops just now, too, as the students have only two days to complete all their coursework. Exciting to see what they are coming up with. I'll post pictures when the shows are on.

catching a breath

2011-05-24T21:56:00.000+01:00

Since Thursday evening last week, it has been absolutely non-stop! I spent the weekend in Birmingham, a city I love for its energy, friendliness and genuine multi-culturalism: ignore the naysayers who deride the place... It is WELL worth a visit.

The reason for visiting Birmingham this time was for a board meeting of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery, roughly the UK equivalent of SNAG, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. The meeting was held in the Jewellery School in the city and gave me the chance to catch up with Yi Liu again and see what he has been making in his role as Artist-in-Residence at the school, a post he has taken up since we last met:

His work is less figurative than before and more abstract, but still very detailed and dark. I also saw some fascinating works by his colleague, fellow Artist-in-Residence, Rachael Colley, who makes fascinating works from precious materials and dried meat and blood:

The meeting was very constructive and loads of work was done to further the ACJ.
After the meeting, I went out with James to eat some Ethiopian food in the very odd little restaurant we found some time back. (Both times we have visited, we've been the only people in there!) The staff are lovely and the food is cheap and good. He's just back from St. Petersburg, which sounds fascinating.

On Saturday, I decided it was time to socialise a bit and met up with yet another fellow jeweller, Miriam Rowe, an American living and working in Birmingham. After a very leisurely lunch - at the eternal and brilliant Cafe Soya - we went to the Jewellery Quarter in the city to have a look at her studio in the Designspace project:

This is a fantastic initiative by the City Council to encourage recent graduates to become more business-aware and to offer them workshop spaces where they can develop their materials with guidance from business support people, including marketing and accounts. All very useful. It is such a great pity that this type of initiative is not duplicated in other cities.
Miriam is working on some new pieces just now, as you can see from her bench:

And she is in an environment where she is surrounded by very, very creative and exciting people, such as Natalie Salisbury, the work of whom I think is quite brilliant:

I'm a sucker for a bit of complex piercing!
After the studio visit, we wandered around the jewellery quarter for a bit, looking in some of the open studios which were available to view on that day but the whole quarter was disappointingly quiet. It strikes me that if Birmingham were really serious about promoting new talent - and I think that they probably are - they should get rid of all the pedlars of Chinese mass-produced jewellery from the quarter and force it to concentrate on handmade, specialist and unique work: it is very sad that people are deceived by dishonest advertising into thinking that everything bought in the jewellery quarter was also made there...

In between all this, I spent loads of time taking photographs which can be seen here, if you are really interested!

Since arriving back on Sunday evening, I've done a bit more work on "A Forest".
I finally managed to get the boss for the base of the main "theatre" milled out and cast. This has been a terrible pain as I couldn't quite get it to mill properly, due to the flexibility of the wax and the very thin leaves, but it finally worked:

I think that this makes the piece look much more balanced.
The lid is now on the inner box, which will hide the way in which the inner box fits into the outer box and has been decorated with applied silver and gold leaves:

Finally, I managed to get some of the intermediate layers cut, one from some scrap galvanised steel, one from an old nickel electrode:

I've started work on the chain now and can see it at last shaping up as I had imagined it!

Hope that I can get away this weekend as planned. Not wanting to be stuck in miserable glasgow over a long weekend, unable to access the workshops due to bank holidays.

thought for my day

2011-05-23T07:27:00.001+01:00

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein.

A thought in the wake of the hubristic non-apocalypse.

Birmingham Weekend

2011-05-18T21:44:00.000+01:00

Off to Birmingham this weekend to meet with fellow jewellers, Miriam Rowe and Yi Liu. I'm going down for a meeting of the board of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery and it's always good to make these things a bit social too.

Been doing a lot of work on "A Forest" too. I managed to complete the top of the main box structure:

The central section is going to hold an obsidian skull with oak leaves around the head in a kind of "green man" motif. (I wanted to make this an especially English piece as The Cure have always seemed to me to be a band which could really only have come from England, hence the oak leaves, acorns and green man.)

I also managed to get started on making the liner for the box which will create the sense of depth and of peering through the trees:

The green is just the colour of the cardboard I was using to make the macquette. The actual inner structure will be on a copper frame:

There won't be any progress on this now until I get back from Birmingham.

cough!

2011-05-14T21:45:00.002+01:00

Well, I got loads done today despite having a strange 'flu-like thing which is making me cough a lot and sneeze loads - not good for soldering - without making me feel bad in any other way...

Attached most of the top section of "A Forest":

I would have finished this section, but the building in which I have my workshop closes at 1pm on a Saturday.

Transgenic Acorns...

2011-05-12T21:59:00.000+01:00

Got quite a lot of work done on "A Forest" today:

This has easily been one of the most challenging silver-iron soldering exercises!

I wanted a large bullet cabochon for the bottom of the piece, to make into an "acorn" but my stone-dealer had nothing in stock and while I could have asked her to get one cut for me, I don't really have the time, so I decided to make my own by milling one in hardwood...

The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that it is being milled from Walnut, a kind of transgenic acorn!

Here's the cap, waiting to be cast:

Not much more to say as 1) My main computer won't boot up and 2) I'm very tired!

scent of a forest

2011-05-11T21:52:00.000+01:00

Because of time constraints, "A Forest" is having to be made to serve two purposes: 1) to enter for consideration in the show outlined in a previous post and; 2) to enter an informal "contest" between friends, colleagues and associates where we all tackle the same idea in our own way. The current challenge is to create a wearable perfume holder. I'm not quite sure at what point it occurred to me to combine the two projects, but they are now quite unified in my head!

I made the bottom part of the "theatre" today. I have to confess that I was in some doubt as to whether this would work at all or not...

It did. This will be the part which holds and diffuses the perfume. Because of the dual nature of the challenge, I wanted a perfume which smelled like the earth, like soil and woodland and decaying plant matter. It surprised me to find that such a thing exists! Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs make it and the woman who runs the place was excited enough about the project to offer to send me a bottle of her "Black Forest" scent:

This is the captured scent of a cold, moonless night, lost deep within the darkest wood. Haunting and desolate, this scent evokes images of fairy tale tragedy and half-remembered nightmares. Thick, viscous pine with ambergris, black musk, juniper and cypress.

Seems perfect!

sawblade supplies

2011-05-10T22:22:00.000+01:00

After Satuday's debacle of the sawblades, I managed to get started again on Monday morning with 1 dozen borrowed from one of my students - another of my students brought me half a gross in the afternoon (I have the best students!).

I managed to cast some of the silver elements which will be used in the piece:

These were all drawn in Rhino and milled out on a Roland mill. The acorn cups and leaves will become finials on the top of the "theatre". The lump in the top left of the picture below is the "mossy" support for the mushrooms. It looked like this originally:

I also finished the cutting for the structure of the box:

And re-cut the girl so that she looks to be of a more appropriate scale:

I'll keep the bigger one and make her into something later.

And now, off to bed...

renaissance-allegorical humour

2011-05-07T18:59:00.000+01:00

(Though the owners might not realise it.)

I've just been sent to this site by a colleague. I've never seen such incredible (in every sense of the word) jewellery...

never run out of blades on a saturday...

2011-05-07T17:51:00.000+01:00

A new maxim for metalsmiths, in the UK at least. I was hoping to finish the piercing on the box flat which will make up the main body of "A Forest" but broke my last 6/0 blade on the back panel:

As you can see, there are about half-a-dozen sections to go and the right-hand panel isn't even started. I can't use 4/0 as they are too coarse and I can't use 8/0 because they aren't strong enough to cut this steel. SO, I have to wait until the tool shops open on Monday!
I suppose I should view this as a charming left-over of the Victorian era, but I don't. Of course, I should really have bought more blades when I saw that I was running out...

Attack Of The Fifty-Foot Woman!

2011-05-06T20:47:00.002+01:00

I started cutting the box for "A Forest" today:

The trees were drawn in Inkscape from photographs of real trees (in Rye, East Sussex) and then transferred to Rhino to make the cutting plans;

Unfortunately, I cut the element of the girl yesterday and my scaling is a bit out...

A friend of mine described this as "Attack of the 50ft Woman".
(Though the mushrooms which will be in here are meant to be outsized, so perhaps this is OK. I'll cut another - smaller - girl tomorrow and see how it looks.)

the kiss - a forest

2011-05-05T20:46:00.001+01:00

I've been planning my entry for BJ Johnson's call for pieces based on inspirations from the works of The Cure. Since I first read about this exhibition, I've been planning what to make and have ended up going with my initial feelings that I should work with the initial idea I had after reading the proposal: to make a piece around "A Forest", their 1980 single and a song which, for me, encapsulates their very essence, both lyrically and sonically.

"A Forest" tells a tale of mystery and loss in, unsurprisingly, a dark forest, the primitive forest beloved of the Gothic novelists. A bleak, disturbed tale elegantly told in five minutes and fifty-five seconds, minimally spare but pounding nervously to a breathless conclusion of loss.

My piece returns to the "theatre" format of Cold Genius and will be a pendant in the form of a shadow-box. One of the reasons for the delay is that I've been waiting for some porcelain mushrooms to be made for me by Lisa Stevens, who also made the figure of the Cold Genius. They arrived today, so it is full-speed ahead with this one.

Some of the initial drawings plus a silver cut-out of "the girl".

Two porcelain ink-cap mushrooms.

The basic structure of the theatre shadow-box.

Wax elements for casting in gold and silver. These were designed in Rhino and milled out on a Roland mill. The blue pieces are "acorn cups" to be set with bullet cabochons.

Published my first Rhino script today! This came about as the result of a student asking me how to do something, to which I replied, "We can write a script to do that".
Four hours later, the PipeAll command was born, based on a flawed basic script I had found elsewhere. It was this script which allowed me to make the acorn caps shown above. The script can be downloaded at Rhinoscript.org.

seed in the sand

2011-05-04T22:05:00.000+01:00

Some time ago, a friend of mine in the US, knowing of my fondness for the films of the Quay Brothers and Jan Svankmajer sent me a copy of a film of which I had never heard: Christiane Cegavske's melancholy and beautiful "Blood, Tea and Red String". The same friend today contacted me to tell me that Cegavske is making a new film - Seed in the Sand" - and is using a novel method of raising funds by public subscription. Given the cutbacks and attacks on "the arts" in general, this struck me as an interesting way of raising funds for arts - not wholly satisfactory, but certainly better than being cut off from funding entirely - and have pledged my support.

Anyone interested in the project can find details here.

harumph!

2011-04-28T14:41:00.001+01:00

I've had to shut down all media, including the BBC website as I am SICK TO DEATH of those annoying, expensive and irrelevant idiots who are about to embark upon an outdated institution of which I have no respect.

Triumph Of Maximilian I

2011-04-26T19:06:00.001+01:00

Anyone familiar with my recent work knows that I'm very keen on scrolls and banners! In Sheffield last month, I went to an exhibition of woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair (and others) dating from around 1512 and which were commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I as a means of commemorating himself after he died. It seems that Maximilian I was obsessed with his own death and immortality. One of the most amazing features of these prints - for me - was the scrolls and banners portrayed in them:

As part of the exhibition, there was a book of the prints available to view, one published by Dover Paperbacks in 1964 and harder to find than hen's teeth. (I did manage to find a copy on ABE books but it has subsequently gone "missing" in the post, which, as we all know, means that it has been stolen.)

Having searched extensively online for the book in PDF or similar format, I stumbled across the whole 60 or so pages on the website of the University of Graz with the added bonus of them having been coloured at some point, the woodcuts in the exhibition and the book being black and white.

The prints are amazing and well worth looking at, especially if you have an interest in European history during this time. There is much here that will be appearing in my future works.

more gormenghast

2011-04-20T20:11:00.000+01:00

When I was in my early 20s, I read compulsively Mervyn Peake's trilogy, "Titus Groan", "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone", a remarkable body of work which is, superficially, fantasy writing: Alas! it is too often dismissed as such. In fact, what Peake created was a fantastical portrait of a rigid, class-ridden society on the brink of collapse, a parable for Britain in the early-mid 20th Century.

As mentioned before, a gift of a polymer clay owl skull prompted me to create a piece based on an episode from the book in which Sepulchrave, 76th Earl of Groan, is driven to insanity by the burning of his library, the madness leading to him believing that he has become an owl.

This is where the piece has got to since that post:

Overall form of the piece. The skull will sit in the central section and will wear the ruby-set crown.

Hand-pierced and carved lettering on a scroll made from found, corroded iron. The "lens" elements are natural quartz cabochons, enamelled below and showing the letters "S" and "G" for "Sepulchrave Groan".

Closer view of the main piece. The corroded iron key is set with a peridot (tip), a garnet and a natural brown zircon. The section which holds the key is set with a tourmaline. The Section which holds the skull is set behind with an amethyst. The iron chain is set with garnets, quartz and petrified wood.

It is the 100 year anniversary of Mervyn Peake's birth this year, so I'm very pleased that I had the opportunity to make this now.

I am currently torn between chapters of two unbelievably funny books just now: "I Think The Nurses Are Stealing My Clothes: The Very Best of Linda Smith" (a compilation of words by Linda Smith and writings about her by her friends and colleagues) and "It Just Occurred To Me: The Reminiscences and Thoughts of Chairman Humph" (a rambling memoir by Humphrey Lyttleton). It was pure chance that I came to be reading these simultaneously, having bought them both in charity shops when on book-less trips. In one way, it is lovely to be able to laugh at the humour of two of the people of whom I would class myself "a fan" but in another, it is really sad to remember that they have now gone and that those eagerly-awaited 6.30pm Radio Four slots will never be quite as funny as they once were.

The Strange Story...

2011-04-19T07:27:00.001+01:00

The Strange Story...
Originally uploaded by the justified sinner

Just before the holiday, I was looking for my copy of "Boutell's Heraldry" in order to do a bit of research for a project I have in mind. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it and, more annoyingly, I couldn't remember the name of the book in order to re-order it.

One evening, Dingo mentioned that he had never seen "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", so we decided to watch that (Lazenby should have had a longer run as Bond: way better than any of the others, bar Connery.)

In this film, James Bond is required to pose as an expert on heraldry and in order to infiltrate a woman's room, he arranges to meet her on the pretence of showing her an important book. He picks up the book, of which I immediately recognised the cover. A couple of freeze-frames later and we had enough details for me to order another copy from a second-hand bookshop!

No doubt the original copy will now turn up.

beneath the skin - review

2011-04-12T18:38:00.001+01:00

Beneath The Skin

Sheffield Institute of Arts, 24^th March - 24^th April

Jivan Astfalck, Elizabeth Callinicos, Jack Cunningham, Andreas Fabian, Chris Knight, Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill, Laura Potter, Jessica Turrell

Running as part of the ambitious “Galvanize Sheffield” festival, this exhibition is one of many events celebrating the diversity and vitality of the metalwork industries in a city which has worked hard to revitalise, preserve and promote traditional metalworking skills such as cutlery and flatwares, silversmithing, and jewellery.

Curated by Maria Hanson, Beneath The Skin is a far-reaching show of work from the cutting-edge of research into metalwork in the UK, both scientific, aesthetic and philosophical, and draws on a wide range of modes, styles and techniques to build a fascinating picture of the exciting range of work being done. Everything about this exhibition is well-considered and repsectful, from the choice of artists to the layout of the accompanying catalogue.

The exhibition has been arranged in the lower gallery of the Sheffield Institute of Arts building, a spacious and calm gallery which invites contemplation of a body of work which demands attention and the respect of considered study. Each of the eight exhibitors is given enough space to allow his or her work to be viewed as an isolated exhibit without removing it from the context of the other works and the video displays and interactive elements are respectfully muted.

It is impossible to select one work - or even one body of work - as representative of this exhibition, a problem neatly solved on the advertising and catalogue by the use of a stylised swirl of colour: each of the artists represented brings something unique and fresh to the show thus what follows is a few notes on each of the exhibits.

Jivan Astfalck

Jivan's deeply philosophical underpinning of her work relates the very current preoccupations of environment and recycling to create anti-commodified works of great beauty, infused with nostalgia. Her work often derives from literature and uses such diverse materials as found wood, ceramic doll parts, pearls, pages from books as well as the more traditional jewellery materials. The work – largely neck-pieces - was presented along with several of her weighty philosophical texts and one of the great pleasures of these works is the tension between the immediate emotional appeal that they have and the philosophical investigations which preceded their creation.

Elizabeth Callinicos

An underlying alchemy – and a love of the same – guides this body of work: mirrors, retorts, laboratory vessels and vintage medical equipment are all present in the source materials which are presented alongside the beautiful, simple and understated objects which Elizabeth has created with great finesse and skill. One of the most striking parts of this exhibit was the sketch-book explorations of the source material and the way in which the finished works – largely in blown glass and metal – explore both the dimensionality of the source and the idea of the “shadow” or the “silhouette” of the source.

Jack Cunningham

Jack's work with the brooch form is almost too well-known to followers of contemporary jewellery to allow for the necessary distance to be able to see the work dispassionately. It takes an effort of will to be able to “look again” and to appreciate the forms and narratives which lie behind the finished work. In this exhibit, Jack has presented a series of pieces which make this easier for the viewer by moving his readily-identifiable style forward with a shift of colour-pallet and material, using more white and plain silver than before, using surfaces enhanced by subtle pencil drawings. This work was presented with additional video material and sketch-books: the link between the source material and the finished work is fascinating and intriguing.

Andreas Fabian

It would be hard not to laugh at this exhibit. Not because it is in any way laughable, but more because Andreas quite plainly found his notion of defining “spoonness” (the Platonic idea of a spoon) not only engaging but amusing. It is too rare to encounter humour combined with craftsmanship or philosophy, but here all three are pulled together very successfully, engaging with the viewer on many levels. The “spoon” objects themselves are beautifully made from wood, felt, silver, steel and other materials. They make the viewer ask, “In what way is this a spoon”: the answer is always surprising.

Chris Knight

Chris Knight's work is everywhere in Sheffield: from the fountains at the railway station to the fencing on a car-park, from the Millenium Gallery to St. Mary's Cathedral. It was, therefore, excellent to be able to see some of his more recent small-scale works in this exhibition, notably his now famous “Lest We Forget” chalice. The most interesting part of this exhibit was the way in which Chris works on the interface between CAD and traditional craft, using 3D software to design pieces, laser-cutting on elements of the pieces, then bringing the whole together with the time-honoured traditions of metalsmiths.

Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill

Since his first forays into metalworking, Cóilín has been fascinated by Japanese metalwork techniques, even to the extent of living and studying in Japan. For his exhibit in this show, he worked with Dr. Hywel Jones, a material scientist, in order to research reliable methods of using the Irogane metals and the colouring of these. Additionally, he invited Dauvit Alexander, Fabrizio Tridenti and Grace Horne to take some of these materials and to produce pieces using them in their own way. These pieces – a tattoo-machine by Dauvit Alexander, knives by Grace Horne and a brooch by Fabrizio Tridenti – plus several bowls by Cóilín show the potential for western artists to use these materials.

Laura Potter

Using wool and found objects, Laura explores the ideas around what is precious to the individual in opposition to more generalised concepts of preciousness. A colourful and deteminedly craft-based exhibit, she boldly – shamelessly – embraces the current Etsy-mentality craft aesthetic, combining it with her post-feminist ideas about nostalgia and childhood, even incorporating wooden knitting machines and a toy periscope into her narrative.

Jessica Turrell

Focussing on the surface of enamel itself, Jessica's works transcend the usual concerns of enamel with colour and/or the manner of application. Her skill in using the tricky medium is phenomenal and in some ways it is quite sad that the majority of people who see her work in this exhibition will not be able to appreciate the technical mastery displayed here. Anyone, however, will be able to admire the pure and elegant simplicity of the work, much of which explores ideas of mark-making and the disruption of surface. Much of the work is based on writing or cipher-like intrusions into fields, the idea of palimpsests and this is combined with larger-scale enamelling techniques such as those used in industry for the production of enamelled panels.

Overall, an exciting, thought-provoking and intriguing show and one which it is hoped will be sent out on tour to further general awareness of the range of activities being undertaken by contemporary jewellers and metalsmiths in the UK today.

a dog's life

2011-03-31T21:12:00.000+01:00

I have a very easy-going relationship with my students. They all know that they can look at the things on my bench, ask me questions about them, make suggestions and talk about any projects that I'm working on. They also sometimes make subtle little jokes.

After I've completed my current project (see below), I'll be moving onto a brooch entitled "Future Legend", which will feature a dog head cast in gold. In order to make the head, I bought a plastic toy dog, which was put on the bench awaiting RTV. Today I noticed that he had acquired a sash:

Which reads "A dog is for life, not just for jewellery". Presumably there is a worry that he might meet the same fate as the pig last week! (He will.)

I also got a delicious easter biscuit from one of them today:

No complaints about that.

The Ceremonial Chain For Sepulchrave, 76th Earl Of Groan proceeds, though I am going to have to stop for the easter holidays tomorrow. I've done most of the work on the main pendant element and will be making the chain soon.

The parts which will connect to the chain are still to be enamelled. The enamel will go behind the letters "S" (Sepulchrave) and "G" (Groan) which are then going to be set under some marvellous rock-crystal cabochons.

These elements have bezels carved into flame shapes and the enamels will represent the catastrophic fire in the library which is a pivot for the whole series of books.

busy weekend

2011-03-27T21:53:00.000+01:00

Wow!
I am completely done in: it has been non-stop since Friday and the stupid clock-change thing happened, which always makes my sleeping patterns go wrong...
Friday night was a night out with one of my friends of longest-standing, John. Through to Edinburgh to chat about things and see some sights, which mostly includes the inside of our favourite bar, The Regent. Didn't get home until 2am but had to be on the 10am train to Perth to go and see the Scottish Glass Society show in the Museum and Art Gallery there, "Trove". This is a superb show, in which my friends Jeff Zimmer and Carrie Fertig had some pieces:

The Wake Of The Hero - Jeff Zimmer

Alchemic Object: Rejection/Muse - Carrie Fertig

I also really, really liked some of the work by others in the show, especially Alxander Galloway's "Prometheus":

And Fiona McGarva's "Earth Free":

There are some other brilliant pieces in the show too...

Clicking on the photographs will take you to the Flickr page, where there are more details.

Today I went back to Edinburgh to meet with the lovely and exceptionally talented Melissa Cameron who is on a whistlestop tour of Europe, including a residency with Elizabeth Turrell in Bristol, a visit to Schmuck in Germany and a visit to Edinburgh College of Art to speak to the students. (I have no right to moan about being busy!)
It was great to just spend four or five hours talking about work, influences, inspirations and just a little bit of gossip. We went to the car-boot sale, Joey D's shop, had lunch in my favourite Syrian cafe and went to the National Museum of Scotland, where I was absolutely struck by the new displays for the ancient jewellery, which are just phenomenally good. Not only do they display the jewellery in an exciting way, but they also show how the pieces would have been worn. Inspired and inspiring:

I've spent a lot of time on trains this weekend. Overall, it has been quite amusing, though the journey home from Edinburgh took twice as long as it should have done. Yesterday, on the train to Perth, I was wearing my "The Use of Ashes" pig earring, which was getting some odd looks, so I welcomed the enquiry from the bold little girl (aged about 6) who asked me "Why have you got a pig in your ear", to which I replied, "Why have you not got a pig in your ear?".
She paused for a moment before replying "Because it's silly". Well, no arguing with that... I admire her honesty and bold confidence!
Her dad didn't, though: he was very uncomfortable with the whole exchange, which I don't really understand.

Also, it is not wise to laugh out loud on trains when you are travelling on your own. Thus it follows that reading collections of anecdotes, comments and scripts by Linda Smith in such a pubic place is also a bad idea... I had to put the book back in my bag and start drawing before I embarrassed myself too much. It didn't help that Dingo also sent me this:

With the comment, which I will quote in full -

"I found an ad in one of the Woman's Weeklies for H Samuel which I thought you may want to have a look at it as it promises 'Fashion Rings to colour every mood.'
'"The pallet is displaying mostly bad moods, with some awkward moods thrown in randomly.
'"The ad is from 1975.
"I'm pleased adverts don't look like this any more."

Sometimes, email on the phone might not be such a good idea either!

Kicking, squealing, gucci little piggy

2011-03-22T19:36:00.002Z

Finally finished my earring, "The Use of Ashes". I've been wanting to make this piece on this theme for myself to wear for almost 15 years and have finally done it! It didn't even take that long to make from start to finish.

I should really have rinsed the bicarb off for that first shot!

Onwards with secret project, which is now annoying me because I like sharing and hearing other peoples' thoughts on what I'm doing...

The Use of Ashes

2011-03-17T20:31:00.001Z

As I'm sworn to secrecy over my newest commission, I've been working on a small piece in the interludes between operations, an earring based on the song "The Jeweller" by acid-folk-psyche band, "Pearls Before Swine":

The original pig was usurped by a more handsome one, who I think looks somewhat smug:

However, the sad sow in the box had the last laugh:

More to come.

I've been listening to loads of interesting music recently. Today it is Ivan Wyschnegradsky's quarter-tone preludes for piano.

at the end

2011-03-09T20:41:00.002Z

"Beneath the Skin" is now complete! I am not making any more pieces for the show and the last one should have had some more details added to it, but I like it so much like this that I'm stopping:

I've a piece of my own to work on now: a ceremonial piece for Sepulchrave, the 76th Earl of Groan and a tribute to one of my literary heroes, Mervyn Peake, who was born 100 years ago this year (9th July).

cut, cut, cut...

2011-03-08T20:35:00.002Z

Working on the very last of the "Beneath the Skin" pieces today. As I was given the metals, the least I can do is try to use them up!

I spent the day cutting out the stand for a bowl:

The bowl is not really practical as it has a skull in the base!

My tray had some very attractive scrap in it, however!

nearly there...

2011-03-04T22:22:00.000Z

Finished the box for the tattoo machine, "Beneath the Skin":

The plaque on top is engraved:

The box is an old one which used to contain a gemmolgist's balance.

I have a little of the irogane material left and started on another piece for the show today to use up what is left, a bowl which has shakudo on the inside and shibuichi on the outside:

running low on ideas!

2011-03-01T21:18:00.000Z

I managed to finish a few more pieces for the "Beneath the Skin" show.
First piece is a brooch:

I like this piece very much as it is the closest to the original artwork:

I also made a pendant and chain:

And have started making the box for the tattoo machine. This is made from an old wooden box which held a gemmologist's balance, now long gone:

And started a few other pieces too. I'm running out of ideas... one of them is a tie-slide!

tattoo machine

2011-02-25T20:08:00.002Z

Finally finished the tattoo machine for the "Beneath the Skin" exhibition in Sheffield next month! I'm so relieved at getting this main part completed and I can now concentrate on the supplementary pieces which are also going to the show.

The missing ring from my previous post turned up - at the bottom of the ultrasonic tank. It had slipped off the hook and while I didn't remember taking it out of the tank, assumed that I had when it wasn't there. That'll teach me! Two rings for the collection are now also complete:

I've a few more pieces in the same style to work on:

I'm not really sure that I've enjoyed this process: it has been very constrained - no found objects, no corroded iron, only one type and shape of gemstone - and has taxed my ingenuity. What I have learned from it is that when I am working on one of my more usual pieces, I have a tendency to improvise on the sketches and probably rely on that improvisation to create what most people would see as my "style", even when the finished piece looks a lot like the drawings in the sketch-book.

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!

2011-02-23T20:35:00.001Z

I am SO annoyed. I had just finished cleaning and polishing these rings:

when I managed to completely lose the one on the right with the heart. I have turned the workshop upside-down and can't find it. It is getting to the point where I would actually be quicker making another! These rings are part of my collection for the "Beneath The Skin" exhibition in Sheffield, of which the tattoo machine is going to be the centrepiece of my section.

FORTUNATELY, the tattoo machine is going much better!

I tried out the finished plate which will adorn the side of the machine to ensure that it all fitted:

It does! Which is just as well as I couldn't cope with having to remake this.
Just as well I had taken photographs of how to assemble it:

Today was also the first time I used Daikon radish to prepare the metal surfaces properly... what a stench!

The piece is now soaking in hot Rokusho:

More photographs tomorrow or Friday, plus some of the other pieces which will be part of the exhibition.

getting to work at last

2011-02-17T20:48:00.000Z

Finally got the colouring of the Japanese alloys working, so can now start on making the components of the pieces for the show in Sheffield.

These hearts are made from high-purity Copper, with 25/75 Ag/Cu fused to the surface, then press-formed. The idea is that on colouring in Rokusho, the copper will turn a deep red and the shakudo will go a deep grey.
I also cut the baseplate for the tattoo machine today:

The metal is a shakudo alloy of 3/97 Au/Cu which should go a deep blue-black. The fine silver skull will stay white, polished silver. I read an article today which said that Japanese craftspeople who work with this material aim to colour it "like a wet crow's wing", which I think is rather lovely.
Details of the baseplate will be picked out in sterling and various different shibuichi alloys and there will be stones set on it too.

old crocks

2011-02-16T21:07:00.000Z

Just got back from an excellent weekend in Brighton!

Most relaxing. Didn't do very much, which is my favourite long-weekend.

Back to the grindstone today, playing about with these Japanese alloys. Just before I went on holiday, I was having problems with an ochre-coloured deposit on the metals and copper plating: I guessed that this was caused by iron in some way - a hazard in my workshops, where old bits of iron are as likely to be on the bench as precious metals.
Cleaning everything up made a huge difference to the samples and I even achieved some very deep colours on the Shakudo alloy:

The "Polish - Rokusho Only" bag has a strip of Shakudo at the top which is actually deep, deep blue. I'll be trying to achieve that again!

One of the problems is prolonged heating of the solution which has to be done in a glass or copper container and the concentration has to be maintained. Today, I tried using an old slow-cooker to do this and it worked very successfully:

This is Niiro solution, being held at around 60-70 degrees C. The Rokusho needs to be held at almost boiling, which this device does when set on the "high" setting.

Tonight, I am trying a suggestion from James Binion's website and leaving the metal in hot Rokusho overnight to turn the copper deep red. More about that tomorrow.

The skulls from last week are now cleaned up and ready to use:

featured

2011-02-08T20:41:00.000Z

On the Spanish "hobby" jewellery website, Beads Perles.

digital mills and press-forms

2011-02-05T19:49:00.000Z

Continuing with the "Beneath the Skin" work, all that messing around with the digital scanner and the Polymer Clay models was to give me a press-forming die, of which I now have two, one with the heart at 25mm and 5.6mm deep...

The negative image into which the metal will be pressed.

Seen from behind, the positive image.

...and a larger one with the heart at 35mm long and about 8.3mm deep.
These were tested out and formed little copper versions of the hearts, exactly as planned:

The copper here - small heart - is 0.4mm thick. The larger heart needs to be pressed from 0.6mm thick or it splits due to the depth of the press:

This project is all about using traditional Japanese alloys and colourings to create pieces and one of the features of the original heart drawing (shown in the previous post) is that it has very prominent black bands defining the chambers of the heart. I am planning to do this by using silver applied to the copper before it is pressed. This, obviously, gives problems of metal thickness and lining up the applied metal to the mould. In order to do this, I used locating pins on the moulds to allow the applied sheets to be lined up correctly:

The silver fused to the surface of the copper. I decided not to solder it as the solder was too visible at the edges of the silver elements.

Using a guide to drill the holes to ensure that the pattern lines up.

The location pins in the mould.

As the dies are relatively deep, they were pressed very gradually, with frequent annealing: the larger heart took 6 anneal-press cycles to attain the full depth of the die.

After the initial few presses.

The finished hearts, waiting to be cut out, coloured and used in the pieces.

2011-02-02T20:15:00.000Z

Working on my new project, the customised tattoo machine and associated jewellery pieces, "Beneath the Skin". This project involves a collaboration between me, a tattoo artist in the US, an Argentinian maker of tattoo machines and a metallurgist in Sheffield! It is going to be exhibited as part of the "Galvanize Sheffield" exhibition.

This week, I've been converting the drawings into 3D forms by various manual and digital means. The original drawings from Zook look like this:

(Yeah, I know that "Beneath the Skin" is being interpreted somewhat literally!)
I wanted to render the drawings in metal and decided to press-form the heart in copper, which could then be patinated, and cast the skull in fine silver, which would not patinate. The background will be made from a copper-gold alloy, Shaku-do, which can be patinated to a rich violet-black. Other details will be in other Shibu-ichi type metals. While this is a vast departure from my more usual style, I will still be incorporating gemstones where possible.

Initially, I tried to make the heart and skull as purely digital models, but my main software package is Rhino and the "organic" modelling tools in that are not particularly good. A crash-course in Blender also told me that this was not the way to go! The solution?

I modelled them in Polymer Clay!
Then baked them and put them into my 3D scanner to create the digital model:

This digital model can then be manipulated and ultimately milled out in a milling machine.

The heart is being cut from acrylic as a conforming die for press-forming. The skulls are being milled in wax for casting:

The main purpose of the show is to look at ways of using traditional Japanese alloys and the patination thereof, so I started work on the test samples for the pieces today. I'm trying to achieve that deep cherry-red which appears on many Japanese metal items, which I know to be on a pure copper surface. I managed a muddy reddish-brown!

In the above samples, the copper has been heated in Niiro solution for 1 hour. The first two pieces are samples to be left as is; the subsequent pieces will be treated further in various ways. Sample 1 (left) is heated in plain Niiro; sample 2 (right) is heated in slightly acidified Niiro with tannin - I was trying to emulate an umeboshi plum as I couldn't get to the Japanese supermarket! The second one definitely has a richer colour.

john barry

2011-01-31T07:51:00.001Z

Very sorry to hear of the death of John Barry, one of my favourite composers. Whether it be Bond themes, The John Barry Seven or his orchestral suites, he was a masterful orchestrator who also managed to be "pop" without playing to the gallery. A sad loss to British music.

lobster quadrille, completed

2011-01-27T21:45:00.000Z

I finally finished The Lobster Quadrille, a piece I started in the spring of last year and which I never got round to setting and finishing. It was the work of a few hours' to complete it.

The ceramic "faux coral" is by Lisa Stevens - who also made the figure of the Cold Genius for my other recent piece - and the jet carvings are by the marvellous Kev Dixon in Whitby. The main metalwork is corroded iron lobster pot, found on the beach and the whole piece is set with pearls, black tourmaline, black spinel, black onyx and transparent quartz.

Details:

The hook is based on an ivory fishing-hook in the Whitby Museum (which is an essential visit when in Whitby).

the black and the white

2011-01-26T21:27:00.000Z

I finished the Cold Genius!
Everything: now to send it off to Goldsmiths' Hall for their craft and design competition.

The box is made from an old wooden box which held a precision lathe. I rubbed it down, waxed it and lined it.

The plaque on the lid reads:

"Ye Cold Genius

"Being ane most sincere tribute to
"Mr Henry Purcell, Composer
"From
"Mr Dauvit Alexander, Jewell'r"

The piece in the box, which is lined with icy-white velvet!

The piece out of the box, with chain attached.

Another view, close-up. You can see the figure of the Cold Genius through the quartz prism in his "Ice Cave".

The main lid open, showing the "scrim", Act II!

Diamond snowflakes and large aquamarine crystal visible through the scrim.

Act III: the finger of Cupid points down to awake the Cold Genius from his slumber. The finger is a copy of a Victorian bog-oak brooch, which I scanned with a 3d Scanner and then milled out from water-buffalo bone.

The Cold Genius removed to be worn as a brooch.

Rear view, showing the engraving of the aria which inspired the whole piece and the catch mechanism which holds the brooch in place.

Although I have another major project to start ("Beneath The Skin"), I've not done the drawings for it yet, so had time today to get back to a piece which I began in the spring of 2010, "The Lobster Quadrille", a collar and matching earrings made from Whitby jet, porcelain "faux coral", gemstones and corroded lobster pot. Most of it was made but for some reason, I never got round to setting it, until today.

The main collar, showing the setting for the carved jet lobster, the porcelain faux coral (by Lisa Stevens), a black tourmaline crystal, quartz in various forms, pearls, and black spinels. The very organic-looking metallic material is the corroded iron lobster pot, picked up on a beach in Dorset.

Earrings featuring black spinels, pearls, porcelain faux coral and two carved Whitby jet winkles. These are a very traditional form of jet carving from the town and were carved to commission by Kev Dixon in Whitby.

This is the jet lobster I bought from Kev about four years ago and never did anything with as I couldn't ever think on quite the right project.

Engraving

2011-01-23T19:50:00.000Z

Work continues on the Cold Genius piece and the main "theatre" is now finished, apart from polishing and patination. All the engraving is now done:

The ice-cave in which he lives, still to be enamelled. The ceramic figure will be visible through the quartz crystal prism.

The back is engraved with the text of the aria on which the piece is based:

"What power art thou, who from below
"Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow
"From beds of everlasting snow
"See’st thou not how stiff and wondrous old
"Far unfit to bear the bitter cold,
"I can scarcely move or draw my breath
"Let me, let me freeze again to death."

nearing completion

2011-01-21T23:09:00.000Z

My current crazy obsession with the Cold Genius nears an end. Everything is stoneset and I've spent the last 2 hours engraving the inner lid. There is about another 2 hours to go, but I need a break!

Stones:

Blue topaz, aquamarine, green quartz, clear quartz and enamel chips.

And here is the very unorthodox set-up for the engraving, the problem being that I had to engrave it after soldering everything in place...

2011-01-20T20:57:00.000Z

An exciting parcel arrived in my workshop today!
A whole mix of Japanese mokume alloys, such as Kuromi-do, Shaku-do and Shibu-Ichi:

I've been invited to make them into one or more pieces for a show in Sheffield as part of the Galvanize (sic) Sheffield festival of metalwork; my colleague Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill has been researching these alloys as a PhD thesis and the final part of his thesis is to produce an exhibition in which contemporary makers make use of his findings.

The exhibition is titled "Beneath The Skin" and I have commissioned Luciano Espindola to make a tattoo machine which I will then decorate and modify with these metals:

The basic drawings for this machine have already been completed by a graffiti artist in America who goes by the name of Zook:

I will work from this to create the machine modifications.

more and more coldness...

2011-01-19T20:15:00.002Z

The Cold Genius piece is starting to take a form now and I can see the end in sight. Which is just as well, really, as he has to be posted off late next week! I set and finished the brooch element today:

This is the main feature of the pendant and can be removed by unscrewing to be worn as a separate brooch.

The box is in its pre-polishing stage at the moment, with the lettering in place. I have still to engrave, enamel and set stones into it.

On a completely unrelated subject, everyone who knows me knows of my loathing of the Daily Mail newspaper but they have outdone themselves this time with an "article" about the Bristol woman murdered over the Christmas period, Joanna Yeates. If you can stomach reading this appalling item you might be forgiven for thinking that it was written by a somewhat spoiled moody teenager who thinks that nobody loves her and who has fabricated a mythical connection between the dead woman and herself in order to compensate for the pain she imagines she feels inside. Yet it was, in fact, written by a middle-aged, middle-class, presumably educated, woman, the contemptible Liz Jones, a woman who thought it was acceptable to go and try to recreate the last moments of Ms Yeates' life and then to write a bitchy analysis of her "lifestyle"...

Which begs the question, WHO THE FUCK IS LIZ JONES?
Alas, all her Wikipedia article says is that everyone hates her for writing this article!
Oh, and that she was born in Essex, which explains her foul obsessions with "labels" and social climbing, all too apparent in the piece. I did also find an article by her in which she says, "Now I know why I hate myself..." and goes on to explain, "I have never felt happy, not even for a moment."

Figures, really. Shame she has to project her unhappy life and miserable being onto the already horribly upset families of those affected by the murder she so glibly trivialised.

More on the Saws

2011-01-16T18:00:00.001Z

UPDATE: Comments from Lee Marshall, designer of the Knew Concept Saw.

I emailed Lee with some of the comments I've received on Ceafthaus, on Flickr and on here and he sent me back a very detailed and thoughtful reply which I quote here with permission.

Spares are available of course. It simply has not come up as yet, so I haven't crossed that bridge. I will send some spares to Tamizen so that she has them available as needed.

Threads....the typical nut for an 8-32 screw is .125 (3.2mm) thick. The thread engagement on the blade clamp is almost twice that! Also, the threads are roll-formed, not cut with a standard tap, which makes them even harder than the surrounding material. The fit is much closer than standard, so there is no "slop" in the threads, unlike the clamps on the usual saws out there.
You are paying a premium for my saws, and as part of the implied contract with you, I provide a top level product. That includes the thinking about such small things that you mention.

Springs....after some of the original saws went out, I was made aware that some springs flew off and got lost in the studio. This was typically caused by lack of familiarity with the saw. Since I developed it, I was familiar with it and I didn't see the problem. I now stake the top end of the spring to the tang, and this is no longer a problem.

He also said that in his opinion, the main advantages of these saws are the lightness and the absolute control they give you over the blade, comments with which I concur. They are also going to be bringing out a few new products soon, including a lever-tensioning saw and a saw which allows for angled cutting.

Lots done

2011-01-12T20:29:00.002Z

I managed to get a fair amount done today. Nothing too complex, hence the blog post here rather than as a point of technical discussion! The main box is finished and I fitted the inner "scrim" lid which hides the narrative of the contents:

Under the scrim will be a little scene from Purcell's opera, "King Arthur", showing the awakening of the Cold Genius:

The white metal is a piece of stove-enamelled steel from a 1960s fridge and the silver frame will hold a pointing hand carved from buffalo bone.