Japanese metal carving

Here is a short video showing Ford Hallam applying Japanese style metal carving to a western style motif.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sEmTdx6VuWk

If you watch, you will see a range of techniques I would like to start learning. I am in the process if making the tools I will need, pitch bowl, chisels and scrapers. I will also cut up some abrasive stones as there are places sandpaper and rubber wheels fail to reach when carving like this.

Musings on beauty

The path to beauty
The same as love
Is always changing
Never not a challenge

The path to beauty
The same as love
Requires hardness
But not turning to stone

The path to beauty
The same as love
Requires softness
But not becoming a puddle

The path to beauty
The same as love
Is always uphill
Never a summit

The path to beauty
The same as love
Is
Worth
Every
Breath

Suiseiki

Looking at Japanese aesthetic sensibilities, I found this practice of Suiseiki or rock appreciation.

The aim is to identify and collect rocks from nature and then, with minimal interference, display them. You are allowed to cut the bottom flat, clean, dry and oil stones. The final presentation is judged on various criteria. You can read more at http://www.suiseki.com/about/index.html

What I like about this art form is it seems to express the ultimate goals of the found art genre. A common river rock becomes something people admire because of how it's presented. Those same people could walk past the same rock without a second glance on a nature hike.

Just do your work

Reed beads

Whilst collecting rocks for my garden at the local stream, I was moving these dried reeds out the way when I suddenly saw that they were in fact the source of those grey beads used in traditional beading.

Intellectually, I was aware that they are seeds and come from some plant but I've not seen them in situ as it were.

I've gathered some up and may use them, although beading is not my current focus, sometimes we are given things to work with by accident. Or perhaps it's by design we can't see yet.

Bling is ok

I found this picture on instagram. For me it highlights the banal schism which has plauged the art jewellery, contemporary jewellery scene since the Modernist movement.

In an effort to be recognised as more than mere craft, contemporary jewellery has pushed traditional jewellery ideologies away. Unfortunately, this has also led to a loss of technical skills as well as the making of the type of jewellery which needs inverted commas to talk about.

There is value in this swing, however, new techniques have been discovered, new materials are now commonly used. New sites on the body have become accepted.
Somewhere in this large group of extremists, artists, traditionalists and even commercialists, there lies the core of craft which all of us who make small things of beauty are bound to.

So, my response to this statement is: Excellent, can we get on with making good jewellery now.

Beauty quote

Magic rings

One of the uses of jewellery is as a talisman or religious symbol. This poster reminded me of that, although I would say this fits in the charlatan category.

Often we get clients who have a particular stone, generally a yellow sapphire or a ruby which must sit low in the setting so it touches their skin.

Something to remember as we make objects is what symbolism they embody and how this will be interpreted by others.

Older work

I was looking at my shaving brush stand and realised that a lot of the things I've made for myself have similarities. This is very useful to look at as I hunt down my personal style.

When totally free from design brief or the need to sell something, I lean towards open fret work coupled with engraving.

This ties in nicely with the designs from decorative ironwork as well as my desire to explore chisel engraving/carving.

Thoughts and feelings around the art deco haircomb

While I was happy that I was able to inlay the silver, I had mixed feeling about the final look. The piece looked fine but the inlay was rough and unrefined. I felt like an amateur which is unusual for me in the metalwork arena.

I have been attracted to the Japanese way of working metal for a long time now but have not dared dive into it yet. The best way I can describe it is 'cold feet' I know that once involved it will consume much of my time and energy. For the practitioners who's work is worth looking at, it has become central to their lives.

So in order to get stuck in I have replaced the word nervous with excited and now I am very excited to give it a go. Fortunately, there is a master in this field who is free with his hard won information and very encouraging to all who contact him with a genuine interest. His name is Ford Hallam and he runs the forum Following the Iron Brush. This is a small example of his work:

The tools are the first step and so I have contacted a bladesmith who lives near me and he will help me with steel selection, heat treatment and grinding the profiles of the chisels.

Lessons learnt from Art Deco Haircomb

At the start of this project I was pretty confidant, I knew the theory behind inlay and I had a great design to try it out on. What I learnt very quickly is knowing the theory and having ok hand skills id not enough to make something spectacular on your first go.

Here are some of the specific issues I encountered

Burrs go blunt really quickly when they're used on titanium and they cannot be resharpened. Burrs are a fixed size and make a fixed size groove. You cannot carve a tapering groove of uniform depth with a ball burr.

Carving using rotary tools is fairly quick but has limitations. As you use a rubber wheel, the diameter changes. As the diameter of the wheel becomes smaller, you have to compensate by moving it from side to side in the concave, resulting in an uneven finish. Rotary tools have a specific contact area and it's easy to grind somewhere you did not mean to while trying to get into the space you are concentrating on.

You have to cut the inlay pieces quite precisely and then file them to match exactly. If it doesn't fit properly then when you hammer the piece down, the top folds over and it can indent the surface of the base material. If the top folds over too much, it has no base to squish into the undercut. Just using a hammer to smack the pieces in is inaccurate so you have to use a punch.

The solution to a lot of these problems is to carve the grooves and undercuts with chisels instead of using burrs. So this becomes my next mission, to make the correct chisels needed for such work. Using a hammer and chisels requires two hands, therefore I will need to prepare a pitch bowl to hold the work for me as well.

Art Deco Haircomb Process

Faced with an Art Deco themed exhibition, I decided to do something which would allow me to try inlay. I thought of a hat pin at first but then found a picture of a hair comb which looked beautiful and which would translate well into the more modern medium of titanium.

I chose to use titanium as it is light which is ideal for something which must stay in the hair. Titanium can also be coloured using heat which would provide the type of contrast to the fine silver inlay I was looking for.

Here is a step by step explanation



design layout and drilled

Most of the piercing done

Piercing complete

Start of the carving, using a carborundum disk

Pattern grooved out and undercut with ball burrs and setters HD burrs

Using masking tape and pencil to transfer the shapes of the voids

One lot in, the next lot cut out and ready inlay

The fine silver piece I cut the small inlays out of

One half done

Completed piece, titanium heat coloured with fine silver inlays

Words to live by

Since I am feeling like a beginner I found this quote from Miyomoto Musashi