Monday, January 21, 2013


A Greenleaf for Ed

 

My buddy Ed gave me an old gold ring of his a few years back. I always wanted to reuse the gold in making him an "Art Pin" that he could wear to openings and parties and such as that. I just couldn't think of what would be appropriate for him to wear. But e few weeks ago just after Thanksgiving an idea came to me.

I remember visiting the “North Carolina School of Performing Arts" many decades back...as mater of fact...back in the 70's in my serious hippie daze. One of the drills the instructors would used to strip your personality away so you could over print the role of the person you were to play was to make your own name unimportant. They would train you to do this by making you repeat your name out loud over and over again to the class for 5 minutes or so. Try it some time (but maybe in the privacy of your own home). After a few minutes your name starts to be just a bunch syllables. It starts to lose importance and even meaning...just a bit of noise. In any case the same thing happened to me with Ed's last name. I had heard and used it so often over the years that I had forgotten how unusual it was...”Greenleaf”.

The solution for the subject matter of the “Art Pin” was of course now very self evident. It just had to be a “green leaf”. So I charged into the task armed with some room temperature curing specialty resins the gold from his old ring and some sterling.

I wanted the outline of the leaf to be very stylized and simple but I wanted the surface to look very rich. Kind of like the look of a dollop of mint jelly in a silver spoon. The first sample was okay but it lack the lush look of jelly. The images I had seen of Basse Taille enameling where the back metal surface is engraved or carved before the enamel applied was what I was after. A heart bur was just the ticket needed to cover the background silver with a field of “poppy seed” bright cuts to reflect the light back through the enameling.



After a few more test runs the finished product was just what I had hoped for, a “green leaf” pin for Ed.
 
 


 

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