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.
