Accidental art and other matters

 

Some folk will be aware that recently I have been playing with melting metal that supposedly is pure silver or has a high silver content.  I had reported that a melt I did produced a bronze hard metal (see below) - probably silver over brass; and another produced a very hard silver coloured metal but not really able to be rolled into wire. 

So I put the metal from the two melts together and added a bit of pewter to see if it would result in a softer metal; but no - it resulted in the wild beautiful rainbow metal in the opening photo and below.

This metal is very crystalline, almost glass like, as you can see in the before and after photo of the wire straws I poured in the photos below.  The straws broke when I tested a simple bend!!!

So instead of using this metal for jewellery I have made some gorgeous rainbow hull forms such as in the opening photo and below. You can also see that the metal had run out of rainbow puff by the time I poured the third hull in the middle.

I tried to create a circular form with the original bronze wire; but as you can see from the photos below this just did not work - again too crystalline.

The lesson? If you want pure metals start with known pure metals; but if you are happy to accept accidental art then have a play.