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with forged beauty. |
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Furnature
& Home Accessories Expressing Your Unique Style |
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Sculptural Windbiles Powered by wind and imagination |
Latest Revisions Added Feburary 2011
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Songs of Distant Oceans These series pieces have been given their own descriptive section. |
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forged and fabricated wrought iron & copper Fall 2008 " The body of the urn is composed of a number of individually hand forged strips of antique wrought iron. I saw samples of the basic technique employed by the Japanese blacksmith Takayoshi Komine at a workshop / demonstration two summers past. (Taka uses the method to make subtle oil lamps employed in the Tea Ceremony.) Actual historic wrought iron has been chosen for the construction because of its excellent forging characteristics and special durability. The metal itself is already some 150 years old — and should easily endure for centuries more. A fitting resting place for the memories of one past beyond us. " For more details on the thought behind and creation
of this object - Go on
to a detailed description |
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forged mild steel structural bars with decorative paint hand blown glass by Catherine Vamvakas Lay Fall 2008 "Fire at Heart" was one of a limited number of new sculptural pieces I created in early summer of 2007. I decided this year to focus on producing a number of concept pieces to illustrate directions I had wanted to approach for some time as an artisan. The glass spear at the core of this piece was the original inspiration. It was formed by Toronto glass artist Catherine Vamvakas Lay. She had given me the piece to have a much simpler wall mount made for it. I was struck by its quality, and was driven to forge this fantastic plant form to hold it instead. The subtle colours within the glass suggested the washes of blue, green and yellow used on the metalwork. The piece was sold within hours of its first public display. |
Overall View |
Close up of Glass Core |
Detail of Paintwork |
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This image is of an Art Nouveau styled hanger for a blown glass vase. I had picked up the vase from a glass artist years earlier. (This is an early piece - from the early 1990's) The individual rods that make up the hanger both change profile from flat to round, but also form reversal curve tendrils. This is one of my favourite small pieces and remains in my own collection. |
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These two items show the potential of forged steel as a flexible decorative material. The "Old Wolf Broach" (1990) is a modern variation on the ancient penanular type, and was made as one of a matched pair. Despite it's small size (about 2 1/2"), it uses a large number of individual techniques. It is often MORE difficult to work on this small scale, as it is hard to localize the heated area to control the effects! The punched Dragon Head (8/91) also uses a number of forming steps. This piece was inspired by a pair of Celtic Iron Age fire dogs found in Wales. It forms one end of a long toasting fork. I have not worked very much with 3-D punching, a technique that also exploits the 'plastic' nature of the hot metal. |
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