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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.

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.

It’s been a hectic few weeks. I have been working on getting art into the store on Beach Street for the Juried Miniature Show scheduled to open on December 3rd. We are also starting to become a new LLC, ArtHaus NY LLC.
I showed and sold jewelry at the Wearable Art Show which was held on November 6th and am now preparing for a Thanksgiving weekend  and a Christmas show that will take place in about a weeks time.

In the mean time I have finished a few pieces of jewelry and started on the Lion Cup saucer. The first two Lion Cups have been sold to the Jewish Museum in their Celebrations Shop. The first cup was sold to a lady who wants a saucer, so everything is moving faster than it would without a time goal. Robert, who turns wooden bowls for the store made me a pitch box big enough for the saucer, here it is with the prepared disk laid into it. The disk was prepared by annealing and sinking the center  a little to make a depression for the cup. 

The design has been reworked to let the Lions prowl, meeting the bull and chasing the ram. I made stencils of the basic shape to help me get the design onto the border as I designed it.  You’ll see the working drawing in the background of a photo further down in this entry. I still hadn’t completed the drawing as the work began on the  saucer.

Drawing is in place, it is filled in and adjusted. 

Chasing in the motif.

One side of the chased line is put down and I begin to rough push the background away from the figures. 

With the background work hardened I remove the saucer from the pitch bed and clean it with turpentine.

I did the first bit of repoussè on plasticine rather than pitch. This will save me time cleaning pitch off of the front before start the middle portion of the chasing work. It also allows me to check the front as the work progresses. I started by placing slices of plasticine on the saucer and pressing it into the surface.

I rolled the plasticine flat, turned the saucer over and pressed the plasticine onto the binder’s board. The board will allow me to turn the plate as I work depressing the animals and leaves on the back of the saucer.

The plasticine sometimes blackens the copper. It isn’t permanent.

The back of the back and front of the saucer after I finished the repoussè and cleaned the plasticine residue off of it. Now it is ready to be annealed. 

Reset onto the pitch bed, I outlined the figures with a small circle chasing tool and began to texture and press the background for a stronger contrast.

The saucer bends as the background goes down lifting the edges which pops the pitch out of the bed. It loosens the saucer which comes of too, it happened  three times as I worked around the border.

When the saucer popped off of the bed, I took that as an advantage and corrected the saucer distortion with a mallet before replacing it on the bed with a heat gun.

This is one way I corrected the distorted shape of the saucer,  holding the rim on my table edge, turning and striking it with a large mallet.

With the saucer replaced onto the pitch bed and its background work hardened, I began to add detail to the bull and model its surface.  I’ll continue with that process on all of the raised figures in the border.  After that it will be annealed again and I will start on the final design work, evening the background texture and further defining the figures.

About 2 weeks ago I stumbled across this video on YouTube. Hiroshi is working in Fine silver in a Japanese technique called shibori.

I had been looking for information about Japanese metal raising after I saw and collected an article on Wayne Meeten’s work. His spectacular ‘Spiral Dance’ graced the cover of Craft Arts International magazine,  #77. (I came across this while we were in a Santa Fe gallery.) In the article, it spoke of his traveling to Japan to study and showed intriguing photos of him at work on large vessels that he held in his lap. There was no pitch inside. I read the description ‘air chasing’ somewhere else and have just decided that this is probably what was being described. 

Yesterday I finished annealing a number of small pieces and wanted to try some of this technique knowing nothing about it. I had a round bowl about 4 inches tall that was ready for the experiment. I also had 3 snarling irons that I made in the last class for work on my cups. They are shorter than the traditional snarling irons and I have made special ‘heads’ on them to reach into the base of cups and to make very small raised areas.  I set one into my bench after drawing some lines and circles on the bowl.

This is the bowl balancing on the small head iron.

This is the working end of my  ’small head’ snarling iron. After using it for awhile I discovered that I could strike the iron more firmly and the small head could be giuded more like a chasing tool, not making the series of wart like bumps that I made in the beginning. 

It was exciting to see that I had control over where the repoussè was going, I could easily keep to my lines, raising an interesting texture.

I had set up two vises with the irons, one for the lines and a broader headed iron for the circular bumps. 

This is just to show you the atmosphere in which I am working,  The second vise is just out of the photo on the right. I found myself moving between the two, hammer in hand, finishing each area as I worked around the bowl. 

I had figured out that the lines should go in first so that those areas would be work hardened, they should act like a skeleton in the body of the bowl. That way I could  make a dramatic difference when I took larger tools to the wide areas. I worked those areas after I tried to harden and deepen the  areas where lines came together or crossed. 

At first I used this chasing tool to make the whole area go down. It quickly became obvious that all I needed was the ball peen side of my chasing hammer and I could reserve tool using for the areas where design relief was closer together or needed definition.

I began to define the round shapes with a few of my chasing tools, it’s shiny where I have started to round out the bumps. Even as I was working on rounding the edges, I could go back to the broad snarling iron and push from the inside where I needed it.

Instinctively I was working from the center  of the bowl’s sides around the bowl. Then I began to work on the lip and foot sides of the ridges

This is where it is now, there has been no annealing, the edge has to be resolved and I think a few hours in the tumbler will give it a nice finish, it might even get a silver plating.

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.

The bowl got an over all light planishing to even out the surface. I still had some deep hammer marks in a few places but wanted to soften them later.  I was more interested in adding something of interest to the base for  visuals inside the bowl.

I drew a star on the base of the bowl, no chasing, I just started to push the metal down with repoussé tools. In the past I have chased a design on the outside of a vessel meant to be see on the inside and didn’t like the way it worked. Recently I saw a guy on YouTube just go in to the back of a large platter (on black pitch) very deeply with repoussé tools, when the front was exposed, he went in to define the figures with what looked like chasing tools, considerably softer-edged than mine.  The Corwin book talks about ‘running’ tools of different widths and profiles for different effects. That must be what he was doing.  I’m moving just a little way down that road with this element.

While I worked on the sides, the pitch lining was cracking a little.  That was  most likely due to its thinness, if I had filled the bowl or lined it more heavily, it may not have cracked in the same way. As it was, I just heated the inside of the lining, pressed the pitch back together, let it cool and continued to work.

When I put the star in the base, it knocked out a piece of the pitch, metal was pushed farther than the thin layer of pitch would allow.

The pitch was melted out of the bowl and I soaked it in turpentine for about 4 hours (to remove pitch residue without fire), while I had dinner and watched Thursday night TV.

Afterwards I gave the bowl a brass brushing  to remove the turps and cut one of the scallops to see if my shears were the right tool, they worked.

The star had a lumpy appearance inside the bowl. Again, something new from the Corwin book, I took some plasticine that had been lying around the studio for years and put it to work. The base had to be supported while I worked on it but I didn’t want to go through the pitch placing and removal process for this small part of the bowl. We were having a heat wave when I picked up the plasticine, it was more pliable than it had been during winter, still pretty stiff but nothing like it was when I was using it years ago in cooler weather.

I packed an inch thick layer of plasticine onto the base and  worked on a board for mobility and to keep the oily stuff of of my worktable. I worked on defining the edges of the star with a pear shaped repoussé tool.

After I worked on the inside a bit, I made a bigger piece for the inside so I could work on it  from the outside.  The plasticine had to be tall enough to raise the rim of the bowl  above  the board.

Working from the outside I was able to smooth out the star’s surface. It was interesting to note that when I remover the plasticine from the inside the copper and the clay were both blackened. I don’t know if there was some unknown agent acting  because it didn’t happen on the outside of the vessel with plasticine from a different part of my stash.

The whole base outside of the star was still not work hardened,  I began to us a dowel to push the base around the star flatter, the bowl is unsupported, resting on the board.

I spent a lot of time refining the shape of the bowl, widening and making the base circular, and removing the visual break between the base and the curved sides.  It took a combination of different hammers and mallets, short trips to a stake, stump depression and board, and  the use of different shaped wooden dowels.

I cut out all of the scallop dips.

The rim was filed into shape ( #2, #4 half round files) and sanded with 800 grit emery paper.  I gave the whole surface a rubdown with the 8oo grit paper. I think it’s finished now, removing the texture might remove its character.

Colman showed me a drawing in the last week of June and gave me a scanned print of it. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could make  a bowl like the drawing, so I and bought a couple 7 inch copper disks at Metalliferous and on the 27th I began to hammer the bowl into shape.  I sank the disk into a depression as a first raising. Here’s a link to  my ‘raising’ video on YouTube.

After annealing, it was raised on a T stake.

It was annealed again, I began to raise it by rounding the sides on a sand bag.  For this operation, I began my hammering from the rim toward the base. That way the bowl would retain its diameter and the sides would round outward giving the bowl a little height in the process. The bowl is shiny where I have struck the metal with the ball peen hammer and duller where I have yet to work the shape.

The bowl was raised significantly and rounded  nearer the finished profile.

It was annealed again, I used the surface gauge to mark and then trimmed the rim to an even height. The next step was to draw on the ‘shield’ shape triangles.

I used the surface gauge to scratch in lines for the height  and depth of the scalloped edge, the bowl was divided into 9 sections and the triangular shapes modified.

I chased in all of the lines after scratching a more definite path with my awl. Cutting the scallops will be one of the last operations, I hear Gennady in the background saying,  ’later, there is always time to cut.’

I have recently purchased this book at Metalliferous. It is a beautiful and thorough work on all aspects of chasing and repoussé. There are sections on tools and toolmaking, the different types of pitch and eastern methods, different from those we learned in the west. The book is illustrated with shots of the various tools and materials interspersed with photos of remarkable works in metal. I recommend this for anyone interested in doing this type of work. The author is Nancy Megan Corwin and the publisher is Brynmorgen in Maine. (It cost $33.00 plus tax)

I had never seen anyone shape the pitch before seeing the illustrations in the book about making a cuff.

It led me to line the bowl with pitch rather than try to fill it completely or use some wood to solidify a layer of pitch. I don’t have a piece of wood that would work for this job and the lining allows me to constantly shift the bowl on the end of a sandbag while I work on it. I raised the sandbag on a short plank of wood because, in some positions, the bowl’s lower edge was against the table.

Pitch removed and annealed again, it was ready to receive a little more relief.

I carved a depression in one of my  tree slices and used the ball peen hammer to push the ‘shields’ out from the inside. I also used a pear shaped repuossé tool in the points of the triangle.

Once the shields were pushed out, I hammered the base all around on the inside to push a little more volume into the bowl. Then I lined it with pitch so I could work on the narrower triangles from the outside of the bowl adding some contrast to the relief. I will probably push the narrower triangles out from the inside once their edges are more defined. I’ve had to stop work on this bowl momentarily because I am involved with the VanDuzer Saturdays here on Staten Island, there’s also some pressing work in the graphic part of my studio. So, this is where I leave the bowl for now.

I made a contour guide from one of the plastic post card coupons that come from Staples.  The outside of the bowl was marked  for planishing.  The center parts are the areas to be worked on so I planished the lip and foot  leaving the center part of the bowl soft from annealing.

In these photos, I have started to push the bowl out from the bottom, you can seethe bulge in its contour. The contour guide shows the space into which I will hammer to bowl’s sides.

I marked the inside of the top with  my dividers so that there would be a guide for pushing the sides out a little.  No contour guide here.

I wanted to set the shoulder an didn’t have a stake or a way to hold the top to do that.  I went to the basement with a hammer and wood chisel and carved a curved notch into a side of one of my little stumps.  I made the curve larger than I would need it to be and carved the groove to accommodate the  domed part of the lid.  Then I used the hook hammer to set the shoulder  in the groove like a negative of the stake I use to set the base.  It worked really well allowing me to strike on both sides of the shoulder angle.

In the studio at FIT I found some stakes that I needed to do a little planishing on the bowl, I had to switch a lot for the different parts of the curved side.

The dime was difficult. I couldn’t find a stake to fit anywhere, then I saw the hammers, this long hammer with a polished round face was perfect for the  top of the dome.

Then I found another raising hammer with a broader rectangular face to act as a stake while I evened out the shoulder. It still need s more work but I ran out of time and had to head for home.

Here’s a comparison shot of the shaping before and after, I’ll planish a little more, reshape the top of the bowl for a better fit and then I will be able to start chasing the surfaces.

I started this project for two reasons. first I need to be more consistent with my hammer work and I wanted to see how closely I could raise a matching pair of vessels. Secondly I need to make some samples of repousse wine cups that embody a new direction in my ideas about decoration on these cups.

One disk has been started the other has only the center point marked with a punch. The disk is hammered in a depression on a stump from the perimeter toward the center.  This stretches the metal. I started with 5″ disks, 126 mm with hopes of raising a 60-70 mm beaker.

This photo shows the first round finished, the second round started where the roundness is restored and the finished second  round.

This is what it looked like after the third round which was struck with a ball peen hammer.  These three rounds were done without annealing but to continue I must now anneal.

I lightly set the bases on the inside so that I would have a reference point from which to begin raising the sides.

I marked the bases at 50 mm and raised the bowls on my pipe stake held in a vise. The bowl on the left is raised  the one on the right is still bowl shaped. The hammering from now on is all on the outside of the vessel. Top and side views below.

I crimped the second bowl  to see if there was any advantage to a more angular raising.

After raising the difference was minimal, only about 5 mm difference between the pieces.

I set the bases on a flat round stake  in my upstairs studio, the light is better there and I can set the stake at a higher position so that Ican see the reflections of my hammer strikes clearly as they are made.  I scratched a 50 mm circle on the base and  set the base by flattening the bottom and striking the sides as I worked my way around the base.  The first cup has been  nearly set in this photo, the next shot shows the flattened base before I struck the sides. 

This is the stake, I only use one small portion of the edge, striking only on that spot to keep the base round.

This is the second piece before any striking has been done.

This is the desk with all my projects, the vise and cups are on the far side under the lamp.

The cups went back downstairs where I began to raise them on the pipe in my vise.

This is the round completed  with the newly set bases before I annealed them.

Next,  I went for another round of raising trying to close the beaker a little faster, this photo shows how much I am trying to move the metal on my pipe stake in the vise.

The bases were set again and another round after annealing.

Another anneal and round of raising, the vessels are very close  to matching measurements.

At this point the bases are near where I wanted them to be but the tops were still too wide and not tall enough.

I planished the bases to about a 30 mm height  and raised the vessels closing them more the rest of the way.  The beaker on the left is ready to be annealed and the one on the right is almost finished for this round.

At this point I planished a little higher and closed the tops some more.  Another shot of the two pieces in two stages, the one on the left is ahead of the one on the right.

At this point I began to planish lightly after raising and before annealing,  I wanted to lower some of the hammer marks so that later planishing didn’t have to be so heavy. I made one more round to close the tops some more.

Planishing the tops after the final closing round made the beakers more circular. They had been slight ovals before I planished them.

Yesterday was the first day of my Spring classes at FIT, I took the beakers to show Gennady  who said I’d done a good job of raising them.  I told him about planishing lightly after completing a round of raising before annealing. He said that, with copper, light planishing was okay in most circumstances because copper is a pure metal. It is not a good idea to do that with  sterling silver,  which is an alloy.  The sterling surface could get “stretch marks” and there was a danger of causing the metal to layer,  with sterling it is always better to work on soft metal.

I took this short video of me annealing one of the beakers before I trimmed them.  Annealing happens very quickly when you heat from the inside  with a big torch. I also marked that when the green flames turned orange the piece was annealed. I think the flames were telling me the oxidation was finished and the metal had relaxed. You’ll hear the quench near the end of the video.

The beakers had already been marked with my surface gauge to a height of 65 mm which is where I trimmed them.