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It’s taking me a long time to tell about the trip to Canada. In the meantime, since that trip there was also a week in Santa Fe with our friends David and Mary Jane, there’s a backlog of photos and I want to talk about current activities.

I have registered for school at FIT, finished the Lion Cups (and am beginning to market them) and am working on two small candy bowls. The whole perspective of metal work has changed from making one piece that I want as a single object into making the model of the piece that I want for reproduction. I even look at jewelry pieces as modular, to use the castings in necklaces and bracelets, as pendants and brooches. The drawings I have made in my sketch books over the past three years are coming to life as pieces of a collection of similar pieces, adaptable to different stones and mechanical connections.

First, photos of the Lion Cups; I made special boxes for them treating them like the treasures they are. The copies are in pure silver with 24 karat gold inside. They weigh just under 5 ounces each.

Here they are in the boxes,  paste paper covered and lined with green velvet.

I have also finished another small bowl based on Colman’s Drawing.  It’s got a smaller diameter so that the sides are taller which lets the ‘Shields’  be seem more easily.  The first bowl was wider with an impressive inside, the out side was more difficult to see below eye level.  The new bowl has a deeper scalloped edge.  The first bowl is in the works to be produced as a silver plated copper bowl, when that one is done satisfactorily we will have a mold made for this one too.

Over the weekend I started to raise two 5″ disks of copper. I have the urge to make a sugar bowl and creamer.  As it turned out the disks were too small for the shape and size I had in mind and I decided to turn the small disks into candy/nut dishes.  Here are some progress shots to the point where I am about to start the chasing phase of the work.

I sank the disks into a depression to start and this shot was taken after the second raising.  At this point I began to push the bowl on the right out with the hook hammer on a sand bag.  The bowl on the left had been intended to be a kind of pedestal saucer before I decided that it too was too small for the intended purpose, so I shifted course and raised it as a bowl.  Each of the disks have different diameter bases, it’s just a little behind the bowl that was on a surer path to its final shape.

I’m about half way up from the base of the small diameter bowl in this shot.

The large bowl was raised again and the pair is almost the same height. The larger bowl holds 8 ounces of liquid.

The large bowl was rounded out and I began to draw the chasing design, it is to be a companion to my first wine cup, I’m using the same stencils and layout.

The bottom design has yet to be drawn onto the bowl.

I intend to design the small bowl as a companion to the Lion Cup, that will involve considerable redrawing as the stencils are too tall for this bowl.

Have been quite busy of late and have not posted for a while. I’ll catch up a little later, the WordPress upgrade has me a little concerned and will deal with that in the near future too.   

This week I’ve been making boxes.  A lot of them.  These first pieces are for presentations. This is the stack as I began to cover the first four.

I seem to have misplaced the finished boxes  photo.

Another box project involved some fancy covering with marbled papers.  The little boxes are to hold a stack of cards. There are a dozen in total, first uncovered. 

And today they are covered.

Meanwhile, on the front porch an anthurium Scherzianum rothschildii has been in bloom.

Walking on near Astor Place on  East 10th Street, the first street I lived on in New York, I arrived at the corner of Third Avenue and looked South. There is so much construction now, this crane stood out, raising another tower, following, in time, the windswept glass building south of it.  

I picked up the gift of a polishing machine from a friend on the Bowery, on the way to Mike’s loft I passed this doorway. Decorative metal work has become prominent in the things I notice these days, I’d change a few things in this composition but I think it’s still a nice piece of work.  

Last weekend we finally had sunlight and moderate temperatures. The trees had even taken a vacation from dropping something all over the yard. (That’s another story, maybe later. . .) School was finished for a week so Colman and I decided, since we had purchased the materials, we should get on to cleaning and waterproofing the deck. The cleaner wasn’t changing it much, it was probably because the directions said we should use 1200 pounds of water pressure to remove the cleaner, our hose wasn’t doing much.  Gary, our next door neighbor came over to see what we are doing, whenever there is some maintenance taking place, Gary likes to visit and give help. He offered his water pressure machine and after some discussion we accepted. The effect was surprising and easy to do, the jet of water removed 3 years of soot and algae that had given the deck a pleasing antiqued appearance. I wasn’t too happy about that but now, a week later, I feel good about it, it’s almost like having a new deck. This is the way the deck looked as we were cleaning the top surface.  

Inside the studio I finished an edition of grass cloth covered boxes that are to be used to deliver invitations. In this photo they are almost finished. 

On the way delivering the boxes I passed Madison Square on 5th Avenue, I stopped for a moment to take  a progress photo of the new tower going up on 23rd Street. The glass skin has started to be installed, in the clear bright day, wind ruffled the protective paper covering like that dry skin we have after being sunburnt.   

The anthuriums are finally all outside, this blossom on Sara has been expanding in the bindery for over a month. It’s one of the largest blooms this plant has produced so far, it’s more than 10 inches wide. 

In the front yard our Full Moon Azalea has started to bloom. All of the flowers are about 3 inches in diameter, the bush produces three types of colored flowers,  a pure white, a pink flared bloom with white edges and blossoms with broken coloring usually in streaks and spots. This bloom is unusual in that the coloring is half and half, like a half moon. 

Later in the week we went to the Edison Mall in New Jersey to buy shoes and visit the book store. It’s a beautiful mall, Summer has already arrived there.