What I’m Doing to Stay Busy…This Week

Here We Go Again! To Promote or Not to Promote?

What I’m Doing to Stay Busy…This Week

I always seem to have a number of projects on the go, whether it is making a gift for someone, challenging myself to learn something new, or making something to enter into a Art & Sciences competition, my SCA life offers distraction and hands on activity.

Just last weekend, I formally challenged myself in the court of Ealdormere, before her Majesty, to create by hand, a ‘ivory’ 16th century rosary. No power tools are allowed to be a part of this process. I am modelling it somewhere between the two examples below.

I have one full year to complete this project. Now, obviously I am not going to use ivory, so instead I’ll be using bone and tagua nuts. Each of these will present different issues and challenges, but that was why I decided to do the challenge.

I have one piece of bone soaking right now to start learning the technique of hand carving it, and have already gone through my stash of bone bits to put aside the ones large enough to be turned into bead … I hope. The ten standard beads will be in the 15mm by 20mm range, which is close to period size. The paternoster and memento mori will be larger, and it is these I will most likely have to carve from the tagua nut.

Currently I am trying to wrap up a project I started for no other reason than to enter it in an A&S competition. The event it needs to be finished for is on November 14th, which should give me more than enough time but the sooner I get it done, the more time I have for other projects.

Yup – these ones. First time I ever did repousse and chase work. The image a artistic rendering of the heraldry of the barony I belong to, with trilliums which represent the kingdom of Ealdormere. The thing on the far left is the base layer over which, the cut out images will be positioned. These are roughly 3 1/2 inches top to bottom. The material for the top layer is brass and the base is copper. They are ‘tongue brooches’ of Viking era and have a pin on the back.

These are the tool I used – made from roofing nails. In the long run,not good enough, but they worked great for this project. Shaping the metal, stretching, rounding, and incising, all with gentle controlled taps with a hammer. I will certainly be doing more of this – in fact… one of my, side projects to tinker with now and then.

I am making my lady wife a rosary appropriate to the period – she asked before I even thought about doing the year long challenge and I decided to make one. I purchased some lapis lazuli beads of a decent size (they were half off) and some smaller opalite beads as well. Now, I know that opalite is a mad-made glass but that isn’t really a problem for me, because in Venice in the 16th century glass was a true art work and highly sought after. These I will string together and put a tassel on the end – and voila, rosary. But it needed a little something, and pomanders were very common on rosaries – hell, they were common on everything – so I decided to make a little pomander for the rosary.

I made these locket parts in the shape of a shell through repousse and casing. They are an inch from tip to hinge- which you can see in the one on the left.

2015-06-14 12.19.01 The one last project that I do consider on going, despite not working on it for months is a toothpick pomander (told you they were everywhere) in the form of a sea horse pendant. This is a long term creation to test my skills.

The outside will be lavishly studded with ‘gems’ that I will carve from coloured glass, and set, by hand rolling the brass over the edges. A mixture of power tools and hand work. I want to return to this one soon and spend more time on it but frankly – it sort of scares me. The tiny gems….it’s going to be very hard. Cutting and shaping glass that small, then trying not to crack them as I ‘roll’ the metal over the edges. But once it is done it should be something I can be quite proud of. 2015-06-14 12.20.55