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.

I’ll open this entry with a shot of my display for Art by the Ferry  which took place the first two weekends of  June. The photo was taken by  our friend Sarah Yuster. It turned out to be a successful show. It was on the tail of that energy that I made the following new pieces for the upcoming show this weekend at the Conference House on the southern tip of Staten Island.  It is to be the first Raritan Bay Arts Festival.  Wish us luck and temperate weather.

I have just finished this long silver chain with faceted, polished aquamarine nuggets and hammered silver rings. I loved these stones the minute I saw them, I have others that will be wired together in the byzantine style as the summer progresses. 

Here’s a close up. The hammered silver rings flash and sparkle when the chain moves.

I finished this chain of triplets at the beginning of the week: a choker made of  polished aquamarine stones in a freeform cube shape with large round freshwater pearls, there are matching earrings.  The hook works in all of the large rings and the piece could probably be worn doubled as a bracelet.

This is a collection of earrings and a few pendants in stone and glass that I put together for summer and evening wear.

I also worked on the Lion Cup this week, It will take a little longer  than I expected getting it finished and ready for wine. There’s a lot of polishing to be done on the inside and on the lip. Here’s a photo of the cup as it came from the electro form mold.  We have ordered another one.

I am working on a new silver wine cup and have decided to take people along with me as I begin to chase the surface. The first 7 parts have been posted on you tube. You can get to my channel by clicking in this LINK to see the series so far. I will try to post something every few days after I complete work at each stage of  working the design into the cup’s surface.

Here is a ‘preview’ in the form of Parts 3 and 4 where I sketch in the design to see the it in place before making final adjustments. I intend to take you along with these videos using real time where it isn’t boring and showing all the steps it takes to finish a cup, even when I misstep. I am still a student but I have been doing this long enough to know that I can correct or improvise when necessary to complete the project, even if it goes awry or veers from the original plan.

I feel like I passed a milestone last night, there are now over 200 people subscribing to my YouTube Channel.  It’s been gratifying to have such a positive response to my work on line. I enjoy making the videos, they and the response to them, give me as much satisfaction as teaching a class or workshop.

November 6

I had worked on my teapot and it was time to trim the top. Gennady had to do it.  We marked it with the surface gauge and gennady got out a large pair of metal shears. One of the handles was locked in a vise, he held the pot in one hand and worked the other part of the scissor-like shear trimming the pot. The uneven thickness of my raising made trimming the edge difficult. Here’s a shot of the trimmed pot and the bits he cut off of it.

After trimming I annealed the pot and planished it from the middle toward the top. I had marked it again with the surface gauge  at a point about 25 mm from the lip where I wanted to close the top a little more. This is as far as I got before class ended.

We were invited to tonight’s opening by another old friend Robin Sherrin. It’s a group show of etchings by the New York Society of Etchers being held at the Art Club in Grammercy Square.

I got there early  so I was able to find  Robin’s print  in the collection of  what looked like about 60 works.  I also saw Steven Fredericks  who runs the society and for whom I have made portfolios in the past.  It was amazing how many people showed up. Here’s a shot of one of the three rooms in which the prints were hung.

Here’s Robin with Colman.

The Art Club is a fascinating place. It’s Old New York like we see in the movies.  Marble, stained glass, heavy woodwork and tiles all in a genteel setting complete with door man and concierge. As we were leaving I took this photo of us in a mirror in the entrance hall, you get an idea of the atmosphere from the things you see around us.

We walked out of Grammercy park toward Fifth Avenue where we were to catch the R train to South Ferry and passed by this doorway. I stopped to look at the decorative work and the unusual iron work railing.

When we got to Fifth Avenue we were near the Met Life Tower fully lit for the evening.

October 15

In class I began to close the top part of the teapot.  We  scratched a line about 50 mm from the base and I  planished a line to harden the pot at that height.  Then I began to raise and close the upper half of the pot. This is as far as I got in class.

At home I worked on the pot and finished the round.  I don’t have a big enough torch to anneal  something this large at home so I have to wait until next class to continue.

At this point it holds 16 ounces of water and I am thinking that I should  redesign the final shape.  I have been looking at a number  of teapots and think a squat pear shape will give me more volume and surface area to chase on.

Here’s a picture of the saucer,  Gennady wants me to work on the rim which means annealing it again. He thought the rim was ‘boring’.  I have come to agree that it does need something to finish it properly.

October 22

Back at FIT, I was to work on the bottom half with a Hook Hammer. I raised and closed the top some more.

Then Gennady set me by a stump with a depression and showed me how to use the hook hammer striking the pot on the inside below the raised and hardened area.  He produced a continuous and regular line of raised surface on the outside of the pot. When I did it, the line looked more like a segmented caterpillar.

You can see some of the first strikes inside the pot here.

Here it is at the end of class, the shape is pushed out at the base, it’s a little lumpy but we can smooth it out in the next rounds.

The sun was setting during the ferry ride home. Here’s the Statue of Liberty  with the Elizabeth port container cranes and the Bayonne Bridge.

October 29

Last week’s class was a lot of work. Work I wasn’t really skilled enough to do.  Gennady wanted me to set the base so that i could planish the lower half of the pot. I set up my flat top stake and tried to sharpen the circle of the pot’s base. It was very hard to find and strike, the base is so wide and was slightly warped, the sides of the pot had been pushed out for the nice round shape of a teapot and were interfering with the face of the hammer.  Luckily, Gennady  came to my aid before I had done too much damage and started to correct out my poorly struck edges. When he saw a particularly bad strike,  he said,  ”That ‘s your last mistake.”  I was in danger of thinning the metal out too much in a very small area. While he worked his way around the pot  he showed me that I could push some of the rounded side wall down in order to get the base circle set.  Something I had been avoiding and in the process of that avoidance, I lost sight and control of the circle I was trying to secure.  Then he chose another stake, in the foreground of the next photo,  with a small stake insert that fit the shape of my pot.  He showed me how I should strike with the planishing hammer  and I began. I spent most of the class time planishing up to the half way mark, slowly  striking, watching reflections connect and build a uniform surface. The planishing, though slow, was something I could do.  Setting the base on a vessel with this shape will take a LOT of practice.

Once I made it up to the mark I switched stakes and began to close the to some more.  This is as far as I got with that

This photo show how Gennady ‘tacked’ the base  with a network of hardened spots rather than hardening and possibly thinning the entire bottom. I intend to sink the center so that there will be a foot to the pot and a depressed area for chasing and hall marks.

November 1

I finished raising the pot today. I also gave the top half a bit of light planishing to even out the surface and marry the curves of the profile.

It  now holds over 22 ounces of water  with about 12mm of air space. We will eventually trim the top edge and solder a bezel in place into which the lid will fit.

Now that the shape is nearing what I want, it’s time to start planning the spout and handle. Usually this would be designed before the disk received the first hammer blow, but this pot has become larger than my original drawing and I would like to take advantage of the extra volume that has been created.  This project has become one that is being designed as we move along. I’m leaning toward one more like the one in the top of the right hand sketch.

Two Thursdays ago I raised the teapot  some more in class.  Gennady and I also discussed the handle and how it was to be attached.  I will need 8 mm wide bezels into which  a wooden plug will be set after the handle has been joined to it.  Maybe ebony and now I need to finalize my ideas about the handle as well as a spout.

This is as far as I got  before class ended.

Over the weekend I finished raising the pot.  Gennady’s sketches of the handle connection are in blue on my concept sketch, my desired profile drawing with measurements is on the right side of the photo.

I was concerned that the pot was closing up more than it should toward the bottom, I made a  tombo 120 mm long with a foot to bring it to the right height for the 120 diameter.  A tombo is a Japanese tool that potters use to throw pots of a consistent size. They are usually made of bamboo and are suspended from a stick looking much like a dragonfly, tombo. They may have two cross bars, one for height and one for diameter, the tail dipping into the vessel for the depth measurement. When I put it inside the teapot I could see just where the diameter was 120 mm,  the foot should touch the bottom of the pot but it is about 8 mm above, floating in the air.  Gennady assures me that we will be able to widen the pot after we get as much height as we can out of the metal.

I set the base and began to raise the pot again from a place just above where the tombo was resting. Raising now is toward the vertical as I try to close the top diameter some more.

When I got to class last Thursday,  I did a little planishing on the base and then we stopped to see a film on raising a freeform bottle. In the film there was a lot of  model making, measuring and template use, but the thing that stuck with me was that  the silversmith would often start raising from the top down and then go back to  work on the middle section between hardened areas.  That seemed to be close to what I needed to do with my teapot.  I stopped planishing my way to the top, drew a pencil line where I needed to start raising and after a little mallet work I began to raise above the line leaving the center section shape unchanged.

It didn’t close up very much and I only gained about 2 mm in height.

Gennady said that my hammer strikes were not close together enough, he pointed to dull areas between the shiny strike marks and  and indicated that the silver there was not contributing to raising the sides. I was to strike slowly and watch the reflections so that they touched each other raising all of the metal together.  It was annealed and pickled before I began raising again, I took a mallet to the lower part of the pot and hammered with force on the bull nose end of the stake to harden the metal and to remove the lumpy parts rounding out the shape a little more. Here’s a look at the second round for this raising, he said the hammering was better and I can see that the top is closing a little more. This is as far as I was able to get before the class ended.

The Saucer

I spent some time last weekend working on the saucer too. A medium sized nail punch was used to put in the textured background around the leafy center.  The outlines were done first in an attempt to control the warping.

As I worked my way around, I was sharpening the leaf detail and smoothing out the leaf surfaces. To keep track of where I was with the leaves, I stamped in the background and  lowered the outer ring of the chased circle once I had finished a set of leaves.

All finished. I heated the saucer off of the pitch and soaked it in turpentine to remove the pitch that was stuck in the relief on the back side.  Then I used a mallet on the back side to remove most of the warp.

In class last Thursday, Gennady said I shouldn’t remove the excess and  urged me to do something with the outer rim. I decided that I wanted  to arc the rim downward and he told me how I should go about it. I was to take a piece of wood and put two nails in it to control the rotation of the saucer.  He said to make a shallow groove  above which I would  strike the back of the saucer rim with a dapping tool. That Saturday I took one of my oak tree slices and set it up like this with two large brass brads as my nail/guides.

It worked very well, I struck the rim in the groove which had been carved to fit my saucer rim rotating the saucer once the silver was bent. Halfway around, I had to raise the brads a little because the rim was curved upwards and took up more space under their heads. I went around a second time aiming the dapping tool toward the center and outer edge to smooth out the curve.

Then I was looking for a stake so that I could do a little planishing on the top surface.  I settled on the ball side of my ball peen hammer, it had been filed down so that it wasn’t round like a ball but has a flattened, slightly domed, slightly rectangular face that seemed to be a good match for the inside of my curved rim. The hammer is in the vise in the lower right of the next photo.

Planishing made the chased and lowered edge of the border look too sharp. I have had to put the saucer back on the pitch so I can work around the border to make the irregular depression tool marks less evident.

Here’s a look at my bench where there are a number of projects taking place.  The center is set up to make photos of a cuff I just finished.

And here’s the cuff. It is sterling set with khaki turquoise, jade and carnelian cabochons.  I made it for me, I need something new to wear.

The saucer was annealed, then I started to lower the center by holding the rim on the wooden dowel I had shaped over the weekend, striking the center edge with the flat head end of my planishing hammer. That put it down a little but not enough to raise the rim so it could be picked up  from a table easily.  I have an oak log that  has a slight depression in it and thought  it would be useful with a large repousse tool.  I hammered that around the depressions edge but it was putting the center down with a curved slope.

Then I realized that I needed something much larger and felt I should have found the flat end of the wooden stake sooner, it was much more effective at moving the silver where I wanted it to go. It was struck with a large rawhide mallet so I wouldn’t damage the shaped end.

The depression wasn’t sharp enough yet. I taped the saucer to a steel block and chose the largest nail punch in my collection. It makes a circle when it is struck like a chasing tool. I set an edge of the punch on the chased line at a slight angle and struck, then I straightened the punch vertically and struck again in the same place, the edge was finally down where I wanted it and the slope up to the leaves was gone.

After completing the circle with the nail punch I took the saucer to the flat top round stake and used the planishing hammer to flatten the center of the depression.  While there, I stamped my mark and a 925. Then I took it back to the log with the depression and used a mallet to even up the raised rim.  It’ll go back into the pitch bowl now so that I can start the detailed (final?) chasing.

The Teapot

I took my new flat top round stake to class to set the base in the teapot. Gennady showed me how to set the base with a mallet. Other times when we set the base, we have always used a hammer. This is the piece right after Gennady finished  demonstrating, the base is being set on the left side of the bottom, you’ll see a shadow where he used the mallet to put a sharper angle against a divider marked circle, on the right side there is no shadow.

Here’s a close up of the inside after I finished the round, there are marks where  the edge of the stake has been hit a  little off  the mark.  We used the mallet to flatten the  bottom too. Eventually I will push the center up to make a foot on the teapot and base will not be flat  or chased.

From here I began to use a hammer and a mushroom stake to raise and close the sides from the break in the angle up to the rim of the bowl.

Finished with that round.

It was time to anneal the piece.

At this point we needed a new stake,  Gennady picked out a large t-stake that had a cut back end, didn’t get a photo of it for this entry.  We had to re-grind the back end because it had a chip right where I would need to use it. This stake was necessary because it had to fit into the angle of the base so that I could begin to raise the sides to the proper height.  It took about 3/4 of an hour to grind, smooth and polish the stake’s end.  I had to polish out old hammer dents too for a space that was just over an inch from the end.  I wanted to use my raising hammer  so Gennady showed me how to strike and how close the strikes had to be to each other.  When I got this far he wanted me to use the mushroom top stake  to continue to the edge. Class was over  a little while after I began to use the rounded stake, this shot was taken just before I began to use it.

This shot shows how much more was raised on the round stake before the class ended. The diameter has grown another 1/4 inch, it measures 8 1/8″ or 206 mm.

The Saucer

At home I have been working on the saucer. This is where it was when I stopped  a few days ago.

Here it is today after about four more hours of repousse work.

As you can see it continues to warp as I work on it.  It is strange, nothing like this happened with a copper plate and the Snake Pit plate when I made them. I probably should have  raised the rim a little to stabilize and shape it before I began to apply the decorative work.

Here’s the topside after I cleaned the pitch off of it.

While the plate was in the turpentine, I thought I might need a wooden stake to help me shape the rim.  I made this one from a closet pole.  I set the base a little flatter  with the flat top iron stake and and put my mark along with a 925 stamp on the bottom of the saucer.  I hope that will be enough of a signature for the set. I still haven’t figured our how to mark the cup.

I used the mallet to flatten the saucer a bit. It is now fully work hardened and will have to be annealed.  Then it will be a matter of the final shape and detailing.  I intend to cut the excess off of the edge, but that may have to become a kind of foot if I can’t shape the rim like I want to.

It’s been a week of making invitation samples for a client and finishing up the silver wine cup. Silver work had stopped because there were too many pressing demands from my binding work and I needed time to redesign the bottom of the cup. The next designs will not take so long to complete. This cup and its design has taught me a lot. Here’s the new design for the bottom, chased into the cup, I have also started to accentuate the lines and push background down from the flower.

The beginning of this cup is in the April 20th entry of this blog. You could also just click on the word chasing in the word cloud to the right of this entry to see it. It will appear right after this entry, replacing the rest of the July stuff.

You can see I still have trouble making a small circle, I think the curve chaser is too rounded, it tends to dig into the metal I’m chasing instead of traveling smoothly where I strike it. I should make another tool. The large curves are made with the tool designed for straight lines.

After the basic chasing was done, I took the red pitch out of the cup and cleaned it so that I could work from the inside of the cup.

I have made two Snarling Irons. The first one was for pushing larger general forms out from the surface of the cup. The second one, with the narrower top, was made because I couldn’t get to areas near the base in the inside of the cup. Its uneven, angled face was meant to get into the corner where the sides of the cup meet the base.  It worked  pretty well.

Here’s what the inside looked like after the snarling irons were used. The darker parts inside the cup are  where the snarling irons polished the surface as areas were struck and pushed out by the iron’s vibrations. I used repoussè tools to expand the volume of the flower in the bottom.

On Gennady’s advice, I put black pitch into the cup with a large dowel so that I could hold the cup in a vise. The black pitch is more resilient and should allow me to produce a greater depth of relief in the design.  In this photo the cup is held in a vise  by its dowel extension so that I can work on the sides.

I’m working on the bottom here and in the following photo. The flower rose way too much above the plane of the cup base.  After I removed the pitch I was able to knock it back down so that the cup could rest on a table like it should.  It was scary and risky but I know how to do it now if it ever happens again.

Here are photos of the finished cup. There’s probably some final polishing to do but this is where it is now.

The bottom medallion.

The inside.

It was only yesterday that the NY Times wrote an article about a show in a Columbia University Gallery. “Delight in Design” is a show of silver tableware from India made during the Raj. Didn’t think I was going to go but I decided last night that I would make the effort. It was the last day and it was something I needed to see. The Wallach Gallery opened at 1:00 this afternoon and I made it up to 116th street and found the gallery by about 1:30. I was fortunate to find the curator, Vidya Dehejia was there talking with one of her friends and taking him through the show. Following along, I got a lot of interesting insights about the culture in India at the time of the British occupation. A few other people joined the impromptu tour and had questions of their own which enriched our knowledge of the times and people around the silver in the show. Here’s a photo of Vidya.

A number of people showed up having read the Times article (Last Chance) and all of them were as surprised as I was that we hadn’t heard about it, it’s been open since the middle of September. This is the first piece that greeted us as we entered the galleries. It is made with spectacularly deep repoussè work, on closer examination I saw a number of holes where the metal may have been worked too hard or it may have worn through over the ages, but none of the flaws took away from the drama of the piece. 

What I wanted to examine here is the insides of the vessels, here’s a shot of another slightly smaller bowl with a shot of the inside which shows how deep the repoussè work is.

  Here are a few shots of the gallery and a case or two.

The rocking chair in this case is a wine bottle holder. There’s a circular hole in the seat so that the bottle can rest on the rungs. 

Here are a few details of pieces I like. The first piece is their PR centerpiece in the Kashmir style, it is remarkably sculptural with a pierced base. This double shot was put together from the gallery web site. I took the shots of the accompanying plate, decorated with the same pattern, showing front and back and another shot of the inside of the large bowl.

  

A bowl decorated with animals representing the days of the week, I’ll have to read the catalog to get more information. 

I like this image of an elephant and Tiger, it’s on a tankard that’s covered with animals surrounded by foliage and flowers.  

 There are many more pieces I liked (especially the little pepper pots) but this is enough for this post, you can see the whole show by clicking on this word

Delight

which will take you to the Wallach Gallery page for this exhibition. There are slide shows that take you through the regional styles of decoration and show almost all the pieces in the galleries.  

There’s also a great catalog available. One of the other visitors said you can find it on Amazon too.  It’s $65 in hard cover.