Fishing boats and crofters cottages

 

The furnace was in full operation today - melting salvaged Selangor pewter and forming wee boat hulls and cottages. I salvage, chop up and melt Selangor pewter objects (goblets and mugs) as they don't have lead content.

The opening photos shows four wee boats (8.5-9cm long: and the photos below show four wee cottages  (about 3-3.5cm long). You can see the imperfections on the cottages - each is cast individually in sand - hence sand textures in the metal.

The boat hulls are poured into a graphite mould I cut; and the cottages are poured into metal moulding sand. The boat sails are made from salvaged patinated copper. Some process photos follow.

The boats and cottages will make their way to Scotland and appear as part of the Pop Up Art Show in the Armadale Village Hall at the end of August.

Tools, stones and silver

 

The last couple of days has been about finishing projects (small stamping tools and metal in stones; and cutting out silver cottage forms for a workshop Fiona and I are doing next Thursday. The finished stamps and inlaid stones are seen in the opening photo.

I plan to make some small silver rustic cottage earrings. I am testing a few approaches for the prototypes. I plan to scribe windows doors etc into some; and test out some home made metal stamps on the others.

The stamps started life as 125mm iron nails - below. 

I have filed and sawn the nails into several stamps with rudimentary window, dormer window and slate texture shapes. Progress photos follow. I a later blog post I will show how these worked on silver.

In the photos below you can see I have started sawing silver plate to make several different cottage forms. The cottages will be about 9X11mm.

I'm looking forward to see how this all works out when we do our half day workshop.

Cottage prototypes - his and hers

 

I grabbed a small amount of time to progress one style of the wee cottages I am making. 

The process-progress has revealed that there is likely to be at least two styles of cottage - mine more literal with rust metal doors and windows and grey roofs (see above) and Fiona's which are likely to be minimalist white (similar to those below). 

Of course there will be the burnt series as well.

Below is an image of cut and painted forms.

Following is another photo of my literal style.

Over the next couple of weeks Fiona and I will make a bunch of each of the styles!!!!