Hearts, stars and leaf butter knives

 

A good day in the workshop working on melting, moulding and stamping metal - hearts and stars; and making leaf butter knives.

Opening photo shows a stash of stamped hearts that will be gifted to those you need them. The hearts are stamped with: go gently, hope, love and care. 

Following are some stars that will also be gifted to remind each of us that in our own way we are stars.

When I was sorting metal to melt I came across a bunch of larger brass and copper hearts - I gave them a polish as you can see below. They will probably make their way to Scotland and be offered for sale as paperweights.

A couple of other melted metal images follow.

For the Pop Up Art Show I wanted to make some leaf butter knives from salvaged silver-plated brass. In the past I called these leaf forms-objects pate knives - but in reality they have many uses - including spreading butter, cutting soft cheese, spreading pate, spreading jam.  I made five as you can see from the photo below.

A couple of process photos follow.

So all in all a good use of time - good outcomes.

Leaves - an artists' book

 

I have completed a  5 'page' unbound  book in leaf form - including grinding and polishing. I blogged on the process of this book a couple of weeks ago - but it is now ready for exhibiting if my application is accepted.

The content of this book is my original fragmentary poem Leaves below:

leaf whispers

ruby

emerald

emerging

unfurling

 

autumnal flourish

copper

golden

falling

flying

 

quiet litterfall

bronze

russet

sheltering

renewing

A few more photos of the finished work follow.

I like the form of this book and the earlier one (Mighty River Trees) that I did for the Narratives exhibition at the Little Red Cottage Gallery Maleny.

Merging of ideas and designs - unbound artists' book

 

I have decided to create a third artists' book to submit it for inclusion in a NZ exhibition. The opening photo shows the 5 leaf forms with a poem stamped onto the flat leaf forms.

I have decided to combine a reworked version of my leaf poem that was used in the trio of copper books and the leaf form I used for my mighty river trees artists' book. As you can see from scribbles in my wee journal the idea came to me during one of our Biblio sessions.

I significantly reworked the original leaf cycle poem - it is now a stand alone version titled Leaves. Reworked with some comments and feedback from Fiona - grand to have a word person to bounce ideas around with. See the photo of the text below.

Process-progress photos follow including marking up  from a template, cutting with hand shears and marking up the cleaned blanks for stamping.

Hand stamping does not always go as planned - the s, p and e in whispers were just too close - so I decided to restamp the whole verse - before and after versions of 'whispers' appear in image below. Probably doesn't appear to be greatly different but it mattered to me.

Following are a couple more images of the stamped leaf blanks.

I hope to grab a few hours in the coming week to make the flat leaf forms into their concave shape and then planish the back to create the faceted look.

When a metal worker makes a book

 

I have started making a couple of artists' books for the upcoming Narratives exhibition at the little Red Cottage in Maleny. Unfortunately we will be in Scotland when the exhibition opens so we need to get our pieces done well before heading overseas.

One of my books is based on my prose poem on the important and multiple roles of river trees. A you can see from the opening photo the book will be unbound and each book leaf will be in the form of a metal leaf.

A few images of font tests on the flat metal and stamping the pages follow.

Once the book leaves were ground and polished they were annealed and then formed into the curved leaves.

The back of the formed leaves were then hammered on a metal stake to take and wrinkles out of the metal and give the leaves a faceted look.

The leaf forms need to be be given another grind and polish and the curves tweaked.My artists' book Mighty River Trees will then be ready for photographing and for the exhibition.

The vagaries and beauty of metal

 

Using salvaged metal comes with is rewards and sometimes unwanted surprises. More on the unwanted surprise later. Image of the furnace at 925 degrees follows.

Some more images of hearts and stars from two different metal melts. One produced stars and hearts with rainbow fire colour as you can see from the opening image and those below. The melt was mainly pewter but with a touch of vintage silver plated copper.

The more silvery melt was pewter with a touch of what was supposed to be sterling silver.

Now about that unwanted surprise. I did a melt at 925 degrees of metal from a vintage silver hand held mirror that was supposedly sterling silver. The metal melted and poured into the sheet metal form as you can see below; but when I came to cut the metal so I could roll it thinner the sheet simply shattered. So there was obviously something suspect about the original claim about the metal - who knows what impurities were in it.

I will remelt the shattered bits and add some pewter and i will pour more giveaway hearts and stars.

The metal used in the bowls and leaf words below was more predictable - a salvaged silver-plated placemat and several small silver-plated trays. The bowls ended up so shiny that they reflected the ceiling of the workshop!!! The leaf words are part of a commission.

The ongoing lesson for me regarding salvaged metal is that it offered mainly beauty but occasionally unwanted surprises!!! 

Copper bracelets and leaves

 

I had a few metal tasks on the go in the workshop over the last few days. The two I finished were copper cuff bracelets I was asked to make; and finishing off a stash of patinated leaves made from offcuts of the blackened rim of the copper laundry boiler I was gifted.

The copper bracelets are twisted thick pure copper wire. I was asked to make two but made three to provide choice. The bracelets were to be 17.5cm around external edges and about 1cm wide. Three very shiny bracelets are in the opening photo.

Some process photos follow.

The bracelets were polished with a wire wheel as I did not want there to be any polish residue on them - they are to be worn for therapeutic purposes.

I had enough metal offcuts from the rim of the boiler to make 7 medium sized (16-17cm long) patinated leaves and 12 smaller (13cm long) leaves.  I did not remove the original patina or the dark fire stain on the underside of the rim. I like how some of the leaves have a beautiful dark sheen.

A few process and other images follow.

The leaves will go into the studio shop for the closing down sale next weekend (29-30 November, 10am-3pm, at DEP 10/74 Maple St Maleny).