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I started this new copper vessel about three weeks ago in class at FIT. I started with a 12 inch square of 20 gauge copper from which I cut a 12 inch diameter circle. Having made a vessel with 18 gauge, I knew I needed to have something slightly thinner raising a larger vessel. I started in my usual way which is to sink a shallow bowl before beginning to raise the shape. These large vessels are really difficult to control. I got a pretty good height on the first half of the first round. Then I had to change angles because I couldn’t continue hammering on metal that was gathering too quickly.

On the second round I planished a band of the first round before the break  and then raised it the rest of the way.

Starting the Third round,  I had decided that the bottom part was about where I wanted it, I planished another time just below half way before I began to raise the pot. Gennady stopped me working on the t-stake and suggested I use a mushroom stake instead for the large diameter, saying I would be more comfortable. We searched the stake closet and I found this one, it was more comfortable and I was able to use it on the following rounds.

Almost there One more round to go.

Last round.

In my studio today, I began to work the shapes into the vessel this afternoon.  I began by dividing the surface.

Some of my divisions were off and I had to draw an equator where I could measure with dividers to make the corrections. I attached a sharpie to my surface gauge.

The drawing behind the vessel is one Colman is working on. He calls it Night Scribe, it is the idea behind this vessel. I intend to chase feathers onto raised ribs in this copper pot.

With the  lines corrected, I made a stencil of a feather silhouette to trace around the pot.

Then I took a dapping punch and hammered the beginning dimples at the bottom of the pot. I did this because I was going to hammer the feathers out from the inside and I needed some reference inside to help me strike in the right places.

Lines were drawn inside the vessel so I could manage the sculpture in stages rising from the bottom.

The sand bag was set on my bench and I used the hook hammer to start pushing the feather shapes out.

After working the feathers up about two thirds of the height I wanted to push the grooves between them deeper from the outside. It became apparent that I couldn’t go too high with this activity, some wrinkles started in two places and I knew that I had to complete the feathers before going any further. I used the ball peen end of the chasing hammer to do this work on the outside.

I finished pushing the feathers out to their tops (this isn’t the end of that). At this point I decided to trim the pot. The uneven edge was going to be a problem to cut if I continued to scallop the top edge. So I marked the rim, trimmed it and brought a preliminary groove up to the rim.

While the pot was resting (I wasn’t willing to put it down), I looked to see if I could make the drawing survive the next annealing.  I thought it would be a good idea to scratch the sharpie lines in with a scribe. While I was doing that, it occurred to me that I could do some chasing at the base to start the feather’s pin end. I chased and I saw that I needed to push that part out more, nothing like drawing all over the surface to bring details into focus. I got out a snarling iron and was able to raise the pinions and raise the ends of the feathers that the hook hammer hadn’t been able to reach. It has to be annealed before I can do much more.

This is the silver cup I’ve been working on for some time now, other projects and dissatisfaction with the progress have delayed my working on it through the summer. I decided to work on this without pitch for the time being until I need to do final sculptural details. It works much better and I am happier with the progress.

If you go to my channel on YouTube,  you’ll find 7 videos that lead up to this one. I’ll make more as the cup comes to its finish.

This video also introduces snarling irons, these are ones that I made, the traditional irons are much longer. I didn’t need them to be so long to work on my cups. The traditional irons are for working on larger vessels and proved awkward for these comparatively shallow cups.

The Yad was finished about 2 weeks ago. It had taken almost 2 weeks to design and execute the chain. I wanted something different and made a variation on a standard loop in loop chain. I made large jump rings, stretched and twisted them into a shape that added texture and interest to the chain itself. Where the chain divided to make a loop was a problem that I solved by adding a medallion. I had a difficult time making the Mogen David and on the third attempt I was successful. The short chain between the Yad and the medallion is seven links, one for each day of creation. The links forming the loop number 28 which is the lunar month. An inscription plate separates the month into two fortnights.  The Yad is in the  Jewish Museum Design Shop on 92nd Street now.

Making the medallion gave me 3 models, 2 of which have been prepared for casting. The first casting is in the chain on the Yad.  I intend to use the other cast medallions as pendants. In making the center  medallion I discovered I could fuse hammered wires together without solder. The one on the right is a cut, pierced and chased star set into a forged ring.

The original dreidels (in my last entry) have been sold and the museum ordered more. I made  these copper ones and have started to pierce the  letters  in some of them.

I am in the process of making more in silver. It took a while to select the stones and for the past few days I have been piercing and trimming the spinner plates. These are still in a rough state. There will be some chasing work before I add the spindles.

I have also made two bracelets based on the Yad chain.  One in 18 gauge  and one that I wanted to be a tighter link in 16 gauge.

Both of these are in my ETSY shop. They are 8 inches, 209 mm, long and can be ordered in shorter or longer lengths.

I have ventured into making some Judaica. It’s an attempt to fill out a line of metal objects around my wine cups. I like all of the ritual objects, especially the spice towers and etrog containers. I’m a little away off from attempting to make those objects, so I have started with Dreidels and a Torah pointer.
There’s a slide show of the finished dreidels on my Tumblr page, Stones and Silver.

I wasn’t planning on making a blog entry about the dreidels so I didn’t take more than a few photos while I was making them. I had to make another couple chasing tools to make the letters on the dreidels. The strokes had to be wider than the lines made with the chasing tool and had to happen the first time around. No second turn to widen the strokes. It’s better seen on the copper pieces later in this entry. The bezels were soldered onto square pieces. This shot was taken after I sawed out the edges to expose a circle within the square.  After this, I filed the edges, drilled the centers, made spinning pins and soldered them in place.

The silver dreidels are finished  and I began to work on another design in copper. I laid the design out on larger squares of copper and chased decorative work into the squares with the intention of folding the corners into the center post.

The next step was to drill the centers and fold the corners partially into position. I used my box brake in the basement to turn the corners up into a position about 90 degrees from the base. Then I used the table top to bend them further. While they were like this I made the center posts by cutting a thick brass rod into the proper lengths.

With the help of a mini lathe, I filed one end of each post into a blunt point on which the dreidel would spin. The posts got brass balls soldered on top and then the finished posts were soldered into the folded squares. I used a small mallet to fold the edges down more which made the corners bend close to the posts.

Here’s a portrait of the finished and polished quartet.

That was the main work for one week, then I began on the Yad. I made two test pieces for the body of the piece out of copper. I have carefully watched Gennady and students all last term working with spiculum shapes. I have had my own tests with the spout for the teapot and knew that I would have to test my skills  before investing in silver. I was amazed at how easily I made the copper bend into a tube. Soldering the things was another story, graphically messy in two colors on the copper, but with a little filing the surface was smoothed even though it remained in two colors.

While I was finishing the dreidels, I carved a hand in wax for the pointing end of the Yad. Roni cast 2 pieces for me and I picked them up on the Monday when I went into the city to buy the silver sheet. By then I had taken time to redraw the tube and knew that I wanted to make two 6 inch tubes. (The 4″x 6″ sheet of 20 gauge silver was  $213. The two hands were $87.)

The final design was not clear. But I needed to keep moving on the project because a deadline was approaching. I cut the silver sheet at the ArtLab in Snug Harbor. They have a sheet metal cutter in their printing room.

The silver was annealed and I began to bend the pieces into the tube shape in a groove on an oak block in the basement. I probably should have used a pointed delrin mallet but all I had was my chasing hammer and the hook hammer.

When the silver hardened It was time to anneal.

Then I was able to close the tube the rest of the way. The tube in the groove has been partially closed, the other one near the hammer is as it came out of the pickle, showing how far I got on the first bending, hammering on the inside.

I continued to hammer on the outside using the broad face of the chasing hammer and closed one end of the tube.

The hammering continued and the tube closed. I closed it even tighter after this photo was taken. It had to be touching for the solder to be effective and this was not quite closed enough.

Soldering the tube was a bit messy. The tubes also had a bit of an arc to them. I was able to straighten the tubes by hammering into the grooved block and on a tinsmith’s stake that has a long end that fit inside most of the tube’s length.

Here are the straightened tubes before filing the excess solder off of them. The copper test pieces are beside them with two cast silver hands.

After doming some copper pieces into half spheres and placing them on the tube, I decided that less of a dome would be more effective.

It also became apparent that the dome should be soldered to a sheet so that it could be seated correctly onto the tube. At this point I had already soldered two rings near the ends of the tube as collars for the design. The intention was to scroll vines and granulated balls onto the tube for a sculptural decoration. Trying that on a copper tube first let me know right away that the vine decoration was way beyond my skills OR that I was going about it in the wrong way. So, as Mad Eye said to Harry during the tri-wizard tournament, ‘Play to your strengths…’,  chasing became my ‘weapon’ of choice. Time was of the essence, I had to complete this in about 4 more days.

Before soldering the dome to its plate, I wanted to chase a Mogen David on it. I found an old broom handle and I set the dome in place on the rounded end with a little pitch. Here it is sketched in before I scratch the guide lines.

I used a strip of plastic post card to guide my scratch lines. Drawing what should appear as a straight line on a dome is very difficult, the card simplified the process enormously.

All the lines chased.

One edge of the chased lines pushed down.

The background textured with a small round head chasing tool. I can’t believe it took an entire day to do this little dome.

The tube was filled with pitch and marked and scratched with a spiral design. This is the first line, there will be four to complete the layout.

The lines were chased by clamping the tube in a vise, working and turning each line in sequence from tip to back end. After the first spiral was chased, I divided the space in half, chased the second line and then divided each of the halves in half for the final lines.

Chasing the texture stripes in meant that I needed a different kind of support. I got out my plasticine and a card board so I could support the tube and move it around on the work bench. Chasing pushes the tube into the clay which is easily reformed into a perfect support to continue working. This is the nail punch I used to make the circles.

Beginning with the finer texture.

Chasing the tube took most of a long day to finish.

All done and nearly ready to solder. The base of the hand was filed to fit inside the tube and the dome has a flat sheet soldered to its base. I also had to solder a chain loop onto the dome before final assembly.

This is how I set it up to get the pitch out. The residue pitch was soaked out in turpentine.

All together now. I chased a simple, lined texture on the end of the tube around the wrist of the hand. Next step is a final polishing in the tumbler.

Since I have been making my wine cups, I have had to make a lot of my own tools. The studio snarling irons at FIT, while they have good heads on them, were too long for work on my short cups. Gennady and I made the first one about a year and a half ago, I have made many more since then with different heads for different designs on the cups. I made the  horizontal and vertical liners about 3 weeks ago.

These tools were made of different shaped tool steel that I bought at Metalliferous,  I filed and polished the ends before bending the  steel into the snarling iron shape.  All of the stock was about 12 inches or 30 cm, long.  On some tools I bent the working head up with a neck too long.  It works but I suspect I might be able to get a stronger vibration if the iron has a longer body.  At the base you need a full inch and a half to  two inches for the vise to clamp onto.

Here’s a side view of the collection. The hammer in the photo is the one I use on the irons when I’m working on a cup.

Last week Colman and I were shopping for miniature vise grips at Lowe’s and I found a set of center punches and a set of chisels in their bargain bins. They looked like perfect candidates for repoussè tools.  They were 2 or 3 dollars for each set of three.

I took them to class and Gennady said that they were okay to grind without  relieving  the temper.  In this shot, I have already ground the sharp points off of the center punches and the chisels are  as I bought them.

After grinding the basic shape, I was able to file them down into more usable shapes.  In this photo the round ones have been started with the file and the flat tools are like they were off of the grinding wheel.

The tool on the right show how far I took filing the round shape, the others show grinder marks. After that I polished them with 1200 grit  emery paper.

Here they all are after final polishing, after I use them I will see if I want to reshape them, that can be done on the run.

After delivering a large order of binding work on Tuesday, Colman and I took Wednesday off to go into the city and see some things together. We had intended to see the silver in the permanent collection at the Jewish Museum but found that it was closed on Wednesdays. An unexpected turn of events. So we went to the Cooper Hewitt to see the Van Cleef and Arpel jewelry show.
It was a surprise to see our friend Idee there, and we went through part of the show with her.

We left the Cooper-Hewitt and headed to a Pain le Quotidien for lunch on Lexington Avenue as we worked our way down town towards the Met. There were a lot of dogs out in the bright weather. I used to make and collect photos of  New Yorkers with their matched pairs of canines.  This was the first set I saw .

Later in the day I saw this pair.  I’m putting the photos together as another pair.

One of the few remaining parts of old, low skyline NewYork. Buildings with only 4 floors.

A few of these dogs  were unusually colored and had pale blue eyes.

This church is being refinished on the outside. It was almost completely shrouded in scaffolding. Only this entrance with its guardian eagle was outside of the net.

A touch of Spring in a sunny corner.

Here are some shots of the architectural decoration of a large old synagog.

The swans are caged window boxes.

At the Met, this is the first thing that caught my eye, a gold and emerald clasp with pierced, chased and wire work that becomes a pendant.

Ceramic masks in miniature.  They are about 6 inches tall.

The egyptian collection has been changed since we saw it last, this piece of carved granite is at the entrance, I looks like a  boat  with the sun in it  framed by a  comb.

Bes and an instrument.

This pot is inspirational. I want to make something like it in mixed metals with solder, rivets and applied pieces of chased work.

I shot this because I am carving some greenware  at the moment. The pieces I was given to work on aren’t thick enough for this kind of relief  buy it will still be interesting to see how it fires.

The back of this scribe/king statue is elegant and timeless.

Part of the crowd in the new roman collection.  We had come to the museum to see the mosaic floor recently discovered in Israel only to find that  that exhibit closed last Sunday. . .

 

Having made a cuirass  for Adi last Christmas, I’m aware of them in a different way now, I took this  for Adi along with some of the other shots of ancient armor.

Colman in the Greek hall.

Some Greek Silver

A breast plate, one of three Greek pieces in  this display case.

A helment with eyebrows.

A silver strainer, in the following photo, a side view with a ladle.

In late January I began to paint again. There are a few canvases  in the studio that have gone through many changes in my mind, it was time to put pigment to the thought. This one finished itself before I was ready.  There’s another large canvas in the studio that seems to be finished too, but I don’t feel done with it. It will probably sit around another year before I show it. This one is fine as it is.

 

I’m not sure this is finished yet. I’ve been sketching this in color on my iPad which has given me the luxury of trying a number of compositions before I got to the easel. But the paint doesn’t always do what you want it to do.

Colman and I went out to Gennady’s studio during the school break to visit and get my spout welded. Here’s Gennady just after the job was done.

The welded spout, cooling down.

Now it’s cleaned up, ready to be annealed and filled with pitch.

At home I was working on a number of projects. We were waiting for cups and saucers to be electro formed in Rhode Island and I was working on another cup and some jewelry. These are pieces of a chain, I was working on two at the time. Both of them were finished today. The recent rise in silver prices has made finishing these chains a proposition to consider, the selling price is going to be much higher than it was last year.  Each of the chains weigh in at 4 ounces.

My whole work bench with several projects on it.  The large vase in the center is  an attempt to completely shape and chase without pitch.  It has progressed since then but will probably need another 15 hours or so.

The finished chains. Ovals and Bubbles. . .

We had a nice day about 10 days ago and Colman took this shot of me with a new begonia that has bloomed. 

This is a small silver leafed begonia  (in a 2 inch  pot ) that Tibor gave me,  it has taken off and is blooming too.  He says that his plant is bigger and fuller but hasn’t bloomed, it’s probably the extra light in our greenhouse that is giving our plants a longer stretch of daylight.

Last week I finished a lot of Portfolios for Talas.

In the back yard crocus are blooming. Spring is not far away.

I had intended to have this finished for a Christmas present. It is to be a silver plated lid for a ceramic soufflè dish. I started it in my usual way on a stump. Here’s my  video on YouTube.
I shaped the rim with a raising hammer on a t-stake and set it onto some plasticine to do chasing and shaping. Then the Holidays arrived and other projects took precedence leaving tis lid to rest for about 10 days. In the next photo I have marked off the divisions and had just begun to chase lines in with a narrow lining tool.

All the dividing lines are in now and I need to push out from the inside.

I was surprised when I took the lid off of the plasticine. The plasticine was black with a slight crust and the inside of the lid looked like  it had been etched. In the future I will not let copper sit on plasticine unless I am working on it. The plasticine is apparently acidic, brushing the inside didn’t remove the slight texture.

I reshaped the plasticine and set the lid into it  to work on the inside.

I started with a dapping tool, trying to push the larger areas out. 

And finished with a few tools that reach the tighter areas of the design.  You can see the etched surface better in this photo.

Here I’m using a nail punch to make circles on the top of the rim,  I use the round flat top stake as a support when using this punch.

This was the set up for chasing the design into the rim,  the wood supports a loose end of the lid and keeps it level for stamping.

I began to fill in a border around the top and found it cumbersome to have to push the lid in order to keep it on the stake.  So I changed the set up.

I got another vise and made a similar set up but with stake on the outside, that way it was easier to keep the lid on the stake by pulling rather than pushing while I used the stamping tools.

I soldered a large silver ball on the center of the lid.

Then it was tumbled with mixed shot for about 6 hours. Next step is a trip to the silver plater’s shop.

The holidays and all the concurrent activities put a stop to my working on the Lion Saucer. I finally finished it yesterday. During the last class at FIT I annealed and pickled it. It was really looking nice all pink after brushing with a brass brush.

Here’s the back.

I wanted to push the animals out a little more, the little balls and fronds needed to be raised  too, so I put the saucer down on a bed of plasticine clay about 3/4 of an inch thick (20mm) that had been stuck to a piece if binder’s board so that it was movable. In this shot you may be able to see that I have been working on the smaller details pushing on the ball shapes.

Working on the plasticine allows me to take the piece off and inspect it while I’m working, something that can’t be done  if the  metal is on a bed of pitch.

I fit the cup into the saucer and saw that I had made the center a little too generous, if it had been 2-3mm I would have left it as it was but it was closer to 6 mm and I thought it might look like the saucer was for another cup. I marked the saucer’s bottom with a pair of dividers and set it onto the flat top stake to bring the edges in a little with a planishing hammer. Here it is with a new center diameter.

Once the repoussè was finished I set the saucer into my pitch bed. This shot was taken after most of the work was done. The back ground was evened out, all of the figures had their outlines sharpened by using a small screw driver shaped chasing tool and the final decorative punches were applied. I also gave the cup rest a shadow ring under the original chased border.

Here are some comparison photos of  areas of the saucer before and after chasing on the pitch. I used one of the screw driver shaped tools, I have 3 (1mm, 1.5mm and 2mm), for the outlining and to add the shadow ring.

Here’s the saucer in its natural orientation.

Now that it’s Christmas and gifts have been opened, I can show a piece I’ve been working on for the past few weeks without spoiling a surprise. I haven’t worked the whole time on this piece because there were emergency projects in the studio for client’s Christmases to finish first.

Adi has been interested in greek armor and cuirasses and helments have figured in his watercolors and paintings. I wanted to make one for him and picked up a sheet of a brass alloy at metalliferous about three weeks ago.
In discussing the project with Gennady, he advised me to start by doming the sheet first to get some height and volume into the basic shape. I sketched out a outline and domed the piece like this keeping the edges of the sheet close to it original plane. The metal stretched to form a shape over an inch high. Here it is about to be annealed, looking into the concave side,

In the studio at home I began to model the piece, I didn’t want to use pitch so I filled the dome with plasticine an adhered the piece to a piece of binder’s board. My chasing tools are too small to make the soft shapes that I needed to express musculature so I found some wooden dowels and a flat piece of wood to use as chasing tools. They were effective in achieving the shapes I wanted. When I needed to do some pushing from the inside, I was able to remove the piece from the plasticine, tap it out and then replace it to continue modeling the surface. Here’s photo that shows the tools (except for the chasing hammer), the piece attached to the binder’s board and the photo I was using as a guide for proportion followed by another photo close up of the piece. I sketched in the navel and nipples with a sharpie and had begun to chase in the navel when these photos were taken.

Taking the piece off of the plasticine, I used my chasing tool to outline the cuirass in preparation for trimming the sheet metal.

While in class, about ten days ago, I was closing the spout for my silver teapot. That in itself has been another learning experience, figuring out which stake and which hammer let alone the angle at which to strike to get the metal to move has been very hard for me.  I am including this photo because it shows the  cuirass at a different angle. 

Back in the studio this week, I used a rounded dash, sausage shaped chasing tool to outline the cuirass and then used shears to cut it free of the excess sheet metal.  Then I stood the same chasing tool in a vise and used the hammer to close the rounded edge. The flex shaft tool was used to give the edge a uniform depth.  

The edge was still not closing enough so I made another narrower chasing tool to help me do that. This is a narrower version of the ‘sausage shape’ tool I used to mark and start turning the edge.

I held the cuirasse in a position like this and struck with a planishing hammer to bring the edge around.

Once that was done I made brass rings  to represent  the rings on a  full scale cuirasse’s shoulders where leather  straps would have held the armor together when it was worn.  The rings were soldered in place, the piece was pickled and polished with 600 grit  emory paper in preparation for a patina.

I applied a blackening solution with the heat of my torch and then rubbed it down with a cloth which removed some of the black surface.  It looked too ‘dry’ so I applied a little wax to unify the surface.  Here it is finished  before it went into a presentation box.