Kuriosities

Fable ~K. de Montbrun

recumbent upon the river,
upon the ice, she wills it
swept by drifting
snow, blankets to winter
the arching back, the tender
flesh of throat, the burning
pulse, below the surface
the river courses deep
trembles, hairline cracks
shiver the surface raise
gooseflesh, tiny mountains
rising, rising, the deliberate
intake of breath, the slow fall

how long has she been
here? wolves circle
cautious, scent decline,
tentative pulse, eager,
hungry, so hungry. harsh
winter, and aching pit
of stomach, need to be filled
to devour, what is offered,
what is not, it does not matter
hunger does not question
why, when. they circle, circle
dreaming, ice quivers
underclaw.

the river courses oblivious
rushing only to meet the sea
it does not feel the girl
rounded flesh pressed
against its harsh shell
does not permit her entry
takes no notice of
orbiting wolves, salivating
jowls, starved eyes
burning new constellations
already consuming, rending
piece from tender piece. it cannot
hear what she is thinking

come wolfie, come close
closer now, closer now

So where are all of the jewelry photos and stories, you ask? A busy holiday season has kept my hands occupied with the making of many things. I have many photos that I will be posting over the next little while, and stories for the pieces to tell. Tomorrow I will post a series of photos and a story for #6 in my crow series.

Letter # 6 – The Largest Full Moon of the Year

Lou,
the moon hangs
large, heavy, round, and ripe
as if she held every longing
I’ve ever whispered, snug
within her womb
and let it grow.

And you, Lou, what is it
you hide within that quilt? What
square are you unfolding now?
Were you listening too, ear cocked
at the edge of that green sea? Was
it your tongue that tasted my tears?
lapped them lovingly from my face, drank
me fully in?

I’m on my knees Lou, and it
serves me right for saying I didn’t
understand, when I pretended
you and I were not
the closest of friends.

I understand Lou, I know the
tug of this moon on the heart, the pull
to sink deeper, into the pounding of that sea,
to drown in it, to be reborn with the
tides.

“I am so like the little anemone I once saw in the gardens in Rome; it had opened itself up so wide in the course of the day that when night fell it was no longer able to close. It was quite shocking to see it so open in the darkened meadow, still avid to take in - into its frantically-wide-open chalice; swamped by the night above it – inexhaustible…I, too, am as irremediably turned outwards, and I am consequently distracted by everything, refusing nothing. My senses, altogether without my permission, make towards every disturbance: when there is noise, I give myself up and am that noise – and since anything that is focused on stimulus wants to be stimulated, I clearly want to be disturbed, and am so, without end.” ~ Rilke

Sonnets to Orpheus II – V

Flower-muscle, that opens the anemone
meadow-mornings little by little,
until the light of heaven’s loud polyphony
pours into its womb of petals,

in the flower-aster’s silence,
tense muscle of endless receiving,
sometimes overcome by such abundance,
that the sleep-sign of evening

is hardly able to give the widely-sprung
petal-edges back to you, then:
you, so many worlds’ power and directive!

We last longer, we the violent ones.
But in which of all our lives, oh when,
will we at last be open and receptive?

Keyhole Pendant #3: Safety and Vulnerability: Further study in themes of loneliness and isolation. A whimsical keyhole, could it lead to someplace enchanted? To an inner dreaming? Three labradorite wishing stones adorn an antique skeleton key. And yet the keyhole is darkened, and what lies on the other side remains hidden, and inaccessible.

Etched sterling silver keyhole plate (original hand drawn design, chemically etched), riveted to backplate and then oxidized. Labradorite gemstones, Antique skeleton key. Sterling chain.

Safety and Vulnerability

I have tread here before
though winds have blown the dust of my footprints
eroded the valleys of my passage
and new grasses, and small trees have taken root
the message the wind carries still whispers
the same.

and if I were to lead you here
the quiet spaces where the breath escapes
then gently fills, renews
if I were to lead you here, this landscape
where my soul tangles in the bare branches
is carried like a ribbon on the breeze-
what mark would you bring?

How deep would your toes reach
to place themselves in these sands,
how careful would they gage their landing?
And could the hieroglyphics of their departure
map my way back to where you stand?

A strange fish for today… A piranha skeleton etched in relief in copper and framed in a sterling shadow box pendant. A wheel has been riveted where the tail meets the body. A macabre child’s pull toy.

Three labradorite stones are included in this piece, on either side of the pendant, and one attaching an antique skeleton key to the chain. Labradorite reminds me of the sea, and in this case, three wishes. Traditionally, it is known as the “Magic Stone”, bringing a swift and rapid change of circumstances to those who wish upon it, and those who do are warned to be careful in what they wish for…

My macabre fishy…means several things to me. It touches on themes of the absurdity of trying to control things that are beyond our control. The struggle to find balance.

The key…the possibility of buried treasures unearthed, longings fulfilled, wishes answered.The precariousness of hope.

I have been remiss in my writings lately. Life has a way of making you slow down and pay attention to others things you may have been neglecting, and steps in rather forcefully to let you know that you need to wake up and listen closely to what they have to tell you. So I took a brief respite from writing here in order to search for the small things that needed to be found. For those of you who noticed my brief departure and asked me if I was ok, I thank you for noticing. I apologize for my neglect, those of you who hazard by on a regular basis for updates…

I have also been working like a fiend in the studio, so I will have lots of new things to show over the next little while. One of the most exciting of which, is the Paiste cymbal piece.

A brief re-cap on the story behind this:

When Brendan Lazar of The Ivorys (a Rock band based in Chicago) first approached me with his idea for a custom pendant, I was a little surprised by the simplicity of design. It was to be a large smooth flat circle, with a large “B” on one side, and then his band’s name on the other.

Usually people come with all sorts of intricate detailing, designs, and layers of meaning for me to try to weave together into one piece. So at first, I thought “Sure I can do that.” and thought that this would be a very quick and easy project. That was until the details started to work themselves out over the course of several emails.

Brendan wanted the piece to be made out of bronze – but not just any type of bronze. He requested that, if possible, we could make it out of a very specific alloy of CuSn8 – 92% copper, 8% tin. The specific alloy that Paiste uses in its 2002 series cymbals, of which Brendan is a loyal devotee, using exclusively Paiste cymbals in his kit. After some amount of research I quickly learned that this was not entirely readily available to a metalsmith such as myself through the ordinary avenues.

It became very clear that we would have to contact Paiste to see if we could find a piece of sheet or locate a defective cymbal to purchase. Later that week, excitement abounded as we were contacted by Yamaha Canada letting us know that Paiste had asked them to donate a cymbalto be made into art – and that they were interested in seeing the results of said art!

The idea of turning an instrument into jewelry enchanted me – especially when this particular type of cymbal was one that held meaning for my client, was one that he was devoted to and used.

But what caught my interest perhaps most, was when Brendan told me to watch a clip of the Who performing at the Isle of Wight festival and to watch Keith Moon play. That perfect polished circle and how it picked up the stage lights and reflected them back at the audience as he thrashed like a mad man. That was when this piece took on a life for me, when it was imbued with energy.

In the end my goal was to make this little bit of bronze so shiny and perfect that it could lure the crows from the treetops for want of it. To take the stage lights and reflect them back strongly enough to blind the audience. Not an easy task when one considers the texture of the cymbal to start, but in the end, mission accomplished. I love this pendant, and wish I could see it in action. Maybe one day I will! Thanks, Brendan, for trusting me with this very nifty project. If you have not already, go, go, go!  check out Brendan’s band The Ivorys!

The cymbal sent by Yamaha Canada and Paiste, a gorgeous 18″ Crash Ride Cymbal from their Innovations collection. You cannot see it in this photo, but it has a small 1 inch or so crack near the centre – so it is no longer usable.

Drummer Keith Moon from The Who, at the Isle of Wight Festival. Note the pendant he is wearing, which was the inspiration behind this piece. For an even better understanding of why this pendant was part of the inspiration behind Brendan’s necklace, you really should take a peek at the video here to see it in motion, and how it reflects the light: Keith Moon Solo

The first cut of the Paiste cymbal and the tools that were used to bring it to this point.

• Gauge (to measure diameter)
• Compass scribe to trace circle on metal
• Centre punch, to mak a small dent for the compass centre to rest in.
• Jewelers handsaw.
• Swiss metal file, to finish shaping edges of the circle.
• Grinding stone for flex shaft, grinds the ridges out of the bronze.
• Medium grind sandpaper rollie for the flex shaft.
• Fine grind sandpaper rollie for the flex shaft.



The circle as it appeared when first cut.



The circle after preliminary grinding and sanding to remove the ridges of the cymbal.



As part of the design process, I give my clients mock-ups down in photoshop so that they can visualise what the finished piece might look like. Brendan at first thought that he might want to have a swirly sort of “B”, similar to the The Raconteurs “R”. After seeing some swirly letter B designs, he realised that wasn’t what he wanted at all.



I sent some other options of different styles to explore his options, and he decided on the Bootle font below for the B on the front of the pendant. For the back of the pendant we used the same look as The Ivorys logo.

A preliminary photo of the pendant in process, after the first etch, but before polishing and finishing.



The final pendant, with a sterling silver bail, and strung on Greek leather. The little specks on the front are water droplets (it was raining when I was trying to shoot the photos.



It is actually even shinier in real life. The photos simply cannot do it justice – but just for effect, scroll back up to see the rough texture that this started out with! I was very happy with the mirror polish we ended up with.







I have the rest of the cymbal to play with now – so if you would like to have a custom piece made for yourself, or perhaps a drummer you know, get in touch with me pronto. My waiting list for custom work for holiday giving is almost full!

Dear Lou (letter #5)

Lou,
I don’t know if I trust
you anymore. The way those blackbirds
fell upon the trees thick enough
to block the sun, all I could see
were wings, the whir
of feathers, their shrill echo
a language undecipherable
to my ears.

And that one, Lou, you know
the one. The snow
of it’s belly, a star shining amongst
the frantic dark. Was he an angel, Lou? Did
you send him there with warnings, the whisper
of his wings beating in my ears,
urging my heart to uneven ground? Was
he there to sing the sun back
into the sky?

Or was he too lost, Lou? Unable to wing
his way back home?

It is always like this though, isn’t it?
You, sitting silent, the deliberate quilt upon your lap,
unfolding square, by patchwork square.
Me, in the hayfield turning stones, searching
for needles to stitch myself into my own
story, never knowing it already began
without me.

It is a grey and damp thanksgiving Monday on this blustery island. We awoke to sopping wet ponies and that chill that sinks into your bones, letting us know that winter is on its way. Not quite yet perhaps, but it is making plans to visit soon. The house is quiet now, with everyone recovering from yesterday’s festivities of overindulgence in food and drink. We had friends come and stay the night, which was fun, and a bit of an adventure. It has been great to have old friends move to this island, people who I can just feel comfortable with and enjoy.

After dinner, my friend C and I decided to take a walk in the twilight hayfield to help the feast settle. We decided to take Miss Molly Ma Gog, and C’s dog (who is actually also Miss Molly’s brother) Bear along with us.

The dew was wet on the grass, and you could smell the woodsmoke from our fire in the crisp evening air. The moon was full, lighting the hayfield and stretching shadows from the hay bales. The two Labradors bounded ahead of us with reckless abandon. Reckless being the key word here. For on the other side of the first hay bale they bounded joyfully onto none other than a skunk.

!!!!!!!!!

The silly things didn’t have a chance. One second they were leaping through the grass in one direction, a fraction of the same second later they have spun 360 with their tails between their legs headed for home, intermittently throwing themselves face first into the wet grass in an attempt to scrub the stench from their woe-begotten faces.

C, bless her,  reacted as a well-mannered lady with “Oh my, oh my, that’s not good, is it?” I was still feeling the wine from dinner and cursed a blue streak that could have well lit the night’s sky.  F$%##%! Goddammit. (Which people never suspect I am able to do for some reason.)

One skunked Lab is enough to deal with, but two is quite the ordeal. So the stinky duo were incarcerated, much to their woeful dismay, with gallons of skunk-off seeping into their miserable hides in the bathroom – where they proceeded to bark and howl their misery for all who would listen for the entire night.

Ah well, as C told me, it will be a thanksgiving memory for us to remember and laugh about next year. And despite my stenchy Molly ma Gog, I am already giggling a bit about it. Poor puppies. Poor skunky C and I after trying to de-stench the puppies too.

Today I am immersed in myths and stories of goddesses. The weather and time of year got me to thinking of Persephone and pomegranates, so I hammered out a simple little pomegranate pendant today in honour of Fall and changes. Sterling silver, raw silk, and 4 garnet seeds…

pomegranate

three seeds
or was it four? caught
between my teeth, each one
a valentine bursting, your dark juices
staining my lips.

the taste of you lingers
on my tongue…

Not too much new so far this week with the cymbal – my client and I are still working out design details. Several people have asked for updates, so although nothing groundbreaking or even beautiful has been accomplished, I’ll show you where things are at. I have the basic shape cut out of the cymbal now. A strange thing that was to take a saw to an instrument – it felt like destroying a work of art – wrought with discomfort and something akin to guilt. Which is silly – the thing was broken and no longer usable – and I am recycling it which is a good thing… I still felt like a vandal.

It was actually not too bad to do the original cut once I started – although the cymbal is huge and clunky to work with from what I am used to. I buy my sterling in small sheets that are 6″ wide, and easy to balance on the bench and handle. A whopping 18″ of heavy gauge bronze is another animal altogether, and unwieldy to say the very least. I somehow managed to wedge it between my knees and the drawer of my workbench so that it would be stable enough to saw with my little handsaw. I’d be lying if I said the studio was curse free that afternoon, and I did snap a sawblade (maybe 2 while trying to balance everything) but in the end a simple little circle was cut.

The above pic is of the cymbal with all of the tools that were required in order to get the piece to the next two photos. (left to right: gauge measure, compass, centre punch and scribe, hand saw, #2 swiss file, grinding stone for the flex shaft, different grits of sandpaper on rollies for the flex shaft)

I filed the edges down to size an then put the grinding stone on my flex shaft. My client wants the piece to have a smooth finish in the end, with a mirror polish so that it will reflect stage lights. That meant that the grooves that are on the cymbal currently needed to be removed, and the fastest way I have found is with a grinding stone. They came off quite easily, though an echo of them still remains that I will continue to sand down a bit more. The next step will be to chemically etch a very simple design on the front of the pendant, and stamp a quote into the back, and then finish with more sanding, polishing etc. as well as attaching a bail. It will be a very simple piece in design, but should be stunning in its simplicity. I’ll post more pics when it is farther along than just a circle.

The inspiration for this piece in particular is the necklace that Keith Moon wore in the Isle of Wight festival. The stage is where it will really come alive. You can see a video clip here. It is large enough that it can be seen while he is on stage, and as he moves it picks up the stage lights and reflects them back like crazy at the crowd. It makes for a really impressive effect.

I am also working on several new clockwork pieces today. I love clockwork piece days, they make me feel like a little girl sorting through a box of junky treasures trying to find the exact piece that will work. I like to make each one slightly different, so although there is a bit of a formula for the record player pendants, I purposely choose different embellishments and configurations of gears and metals. The backings I am working with today are sterling silver.

First step – the sorting. So much fun!

I cut, filed, drilled, sanded and did a quick polish on the sterling backing already, in preparation for the riveting of the watch pieces. These are the parts that I chose…and below is how I will put the parts together. I will post pics in the next day or so of the finished pieces – I am making two for different clients at the moment. The backing will be antiqued and lightly brushed in the end – not shiny at all, as it is now.

Aside from work, today is pretty cruddy. My iron levels have dropped again, and I am feeling pale and dull. When I look in the mirror, it seems to me that I have faded somewhat, like an old photograph left in the light too long. And my brain is a bit clouded with fatigue. So back on the iron pills that make me feel almost as cruddy as the anemia – but at least they will keep my body relatively healthy and eventually perk me back up again.

My cleaning lady today suggested that I eat liver – which is a normal enough suggestion for someone who is looking pasty, tired, and faint. But being a vegetarian for 17 years, not really an option (and no, my anemia is not a result of my diet, but another problem altogether). So I thanked her and told her that I can’t eat liver because I do not eat meat. To which she replied “Liver is not meat. It is an organ.” with an expression that could only be interpreted as “duh!” Which I thought was a strange and curious notion. Still, I’ll pass. The last time I ate meat by accident, is not something that I would willingly attempt again. I awoke in the middle of the night violently ill, as it has been so long, my body no longer knows what to do with the stuff. Ouch, and horribleness.

Yesterday was insane and horrid. Bean (the wee chihuhua girlie) was out playing fetch with Molly (the ginormous black lab)…Usually it goes like this. The stick is thrown, Molly chases the stick, Bean chases the Molly going “yipyipyipyipyipyip” the whole way and both girls come in tired and panting, and then have a nap. Yesterday Molly went to fetch the stick, but fetched it by ploughing through little Bean. She hit her so hard as she ran by that she knocked Bean right out. We thought she was dead, her toungue lolling out the side of her mouth, and all limpness in the grass on her side. When we picked her up her little heart went bump……long pause……bump……bumpbumpbump…… I cannot describe the horror of that moment. Little sweet Binoo in my arms and dying. Except that she wasn’t dying, I just thought she was, but she was in shock. I scooped her up and into the van on my lap and drove the 25 minute drive to the vets at 120km/h the whole way on highways that are meant to be driven at 80km/h. Probably not the smartest thing I have ever done. Partway through the ride she started to sit up and regain her consciousness and shake a bit. She would just keep looking up at me with such pained eyes…By the time we actually got to the vet’s office, she was much better, and mostly herself again – except all cringy and sad looking. Poor little Bean. She has a concussion and must be kept quiet – which is not easily done. She is a little terror most of the time. But she slept a lot today, and seems to be a lot better…poor wee puppy girl. She had a steroid injection to treat her shock, but not much else can be done but rest.

The cymbal arrived from Paiste/ Yamaha Canada. It is, in a word, gorgeous. I do not know too much about cymbals (though I am now much inspired to research and learn more), but I must say that this one is so lovely. The craftmanship, the work that goes into making such a thing. This one has a small crack – which is why its life as a musical instrument has ended, and its new life of being sawn to bits and pieces looms before it.

But before I get my saw out, I wanted to be inspired by this piece in its wholeness. So I played around with banging it quite a bit to hear its sound, and I spent a while exploring its texture with my fingers, and examining it with my eyes. And the weight and thickness of it was much greater than I expected, and a wonderful surprise… And then I took it for a walk.

???

Yes, I know. It sounds a bit crazy. Mostly I took it for a walk because the hay field is a lovely backdrop, and I wanted to photograph the cymbal  for the sake of posterity. I also took it out to see it in a different light. There is nothing like taking an object and putting it in a situation vastly unlike its usual context to jump start the imagination. You do not generally see cymbals out for walks in hayfields, so I figured it might start something…

Mostly it was fun. Molly ma Gog (the black lab) running joyously around whilst I balanced the cymbal on this or that, scaled rusty old farm machinery and scaled decrepit falling down farm buildings. Not only did I start to look at the cymbal differently, but also at the hayfield differently – noticing colours, textures, and settings that I ordinarily overlook as just part of the field.

I returned from the walk, clunkily heavy cymbal in hand, full of energy, joy, and the swelling of ideas.

Here are some of the photos. I will post the whole series later in my gallery.

The nice fellow from Paiste/Yamaha Canada also packed a few Paiste t-shirts in the box for me, on which I think I can make out the visage of Miss. Meg White – one of my favourite musicians, which I thought was very nice of him. I think they will end up as jammies though, as they are an XL and a M (and I am an XS, lol). But pretty cool all around. I have been very impressed with how supportive they have been of this little project…I never would have imagined, and am thankful. It has made the whole thing even more fun.