This post is long, even if I use a fold, or divide it into parts or sections. Further it will be of rather more technical interest... being much about archiving older GRB designs. Mostly rings, earrings & jewelry baubles, which were my work before I became interested in bells. The photos are hurried... not up to my preferred standards, but they engendered my writing bits of story about the processes of learning my craft... as designer, carver, & mold-maker. All ancillary to how I come to be working so hard to retire.
I’ve been tackling the stack of doubled brown paper grocery bags moved rather too hurriedly two & a half years ago. They were moved rather unceremoniously from the old red CD cabinets where I'd kept them available in my large studio on Vashon Island.
Photo? edit? [They had fit nicely in a corner of the big closet where Stephen’s archive room also hid, behind the generously glassed wood-framed original front door before the remodel of Soundcliff, the house I began loving on my first visit to Stephen.]
But now the time has come to tend them more carefully & move them toward their next home. They will go to Momo's studio, clearing space toward my new incarnation.
A first rough sorting-out of their decades of often confused history divided them simply into categories: bells; rings; pendants; sculptures etc... I am cognizant that there are numerous possible further divisions, such as limited edition bells [only 12 of those] or open stock bells [the majority]; then there are wedding bands, ring mountings for stones or the more symbolic & sculptural rings; pendants, with stones or without, again as symbol or sculpture; a series of bracelets & chains; then there are numerous small sculptures, as well as oddments of the curious nature [Buttons?!] conceived for specific clients & notions. I've carved all those... & made molds of most. Working with this collection one more final time has been my recent challenge... & my satisfaction in reviewing them.
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To use a mold requires a specialized tool called a wax injector... a pressurized tank filled with molten wax, having a nozzle against which the opening in the mold is pushed while holding the parts of the mold together to make a closed chamber into which the molten wax is injected. After several minutes it has cooled, hardening enough to have sufficient strength to be freed of the hugging mold. |
That
wax can then be examined for flaws & groomed to be ready cast as a
copy or multiple times for production. One wax is required for each copy
cast. That helps explain the value of the mold.
As I unpacked that heavy cache of rubber out of that wrap of the durable paper of those grocery bags I’ve been re-exploring & studying a lot of my past work in recent days. I’m reviewing, & sometimes rewriting this history… Ostensibly I’ve benefited from the impetus of hunting for a specific mold we want to use for a special order. It is an earring design, more specifically it is the complicated front half... because I have in hand the mold for the ear wire, the part which could be easily be replaced & remolded.
Ah, but I realise the need to begin the deeper story by explaining these molds. They are some of the most durable facts of my creative life. In many cases, they are the only vestige remaining of a design process documenting a lifetime of creating pieces cast into metal. The rubber molds had to be durable enough to sustain the heat & pressure required to vulcanize them, through a series of complex technical processes, which involve interim stages of both positive and negative profiles! Part of my work has been to become familiar with thinking "inside out"!
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One mold was a surprise for my lack of much memory about the client except that it is labled simply "Pinginot", which is the family name of the the family who introduced me to Sedona [or was it the otherway'round?] & were seminal in the early years we all developed the business called Tavernier, located in Talaquepaque. Thus I puzzle whether I designed it for family or client. That is of less interest to me than its construction as a complicated piece mold. I was obviously exploring & experimenting in how to cut the mold... which pulls away from the injected wax into six pieces -- double the usual number! Actually it doesn't function very well. My mistakes are often my best teachers. |
This is a very early mold of a ring I made for SELaM [Stephen LaMons] c.1967
Much of my career encompasses this teach/learning process. I’ve honed a capability to see well in both positive and negative modes. This all is quite totally imaginal work. I’ve learned to think “inside-out” in order to work out problems, both before-&-after the several processes within which I’m dancing
Thus the molds serve both as tool & catalogue of the designs. Proof of ownership & copyright. They are very much a record of several parts of my intelligence. They are a huge active archive. A blessing, because few artists own so much of what is useful over all the decades I have groomed these objects. A bit of a curse for the sake of the various ways their bulk & weight require energy & space to file & store.
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The story of the Frog Prince has long fascinated me, for reasons of simple romance. It's a sweet story. |
My retirement allows... indeed pushes me through some ‘farewell tour’ as I roughly sort the bags of molds in a manner which will communicate, by a more current curation, where my experience or opinion suggests potential for their future. This is work which will help increase my ease as I hand them off into their independence. Blessed Be!
Thus the photo images I made as part of this large project become a partial archive of these decades’ designs, most of which are simply history for its own value. A few will eventually be incorporated into the line to broaden the availability of GRB designs. With Monica [Momo] Street’s new energies as she assumes the lead in the business next year. I marvel at being ready to practice "leading from behind". Fortunately patience is one of my best skills. Being opinionated is another — with two tongues. Confident am I in most scenarios of our future… the Bells & Myself, my traveling with Stephen much of our time… plus dancing with Monica into the evolving version of the business.
This bel buckle has the problem of my showing off by carving the whole design too light & thin, in part an attempt to minimize fluctuating metal market costs, but such ego seduced me into a presumption that it could be successfully molded & actually cast!
This is the simple bit of lifting from ancient archetypal basic function. I'm not that old!
This "Celtic Swan" mold surfaced to bring the surprise of some complex memories. I found it still to be a quality carving for production design. It is one of only a few designs for which I sold the copyright, so I view it appreciatively from some legal distance. I might observe wryly that, for all these designs I'm sharing in this post, that I seem always to sell-away my best designs. I hope & trust Ann Fabricant feels similarly...
One of the many wedding bands I made over the years...
Belt buckles, cape clasps, chain links & other exotic notions are interesting to my various archaic engineering interests, ... [or perhaps some vestige of appreciation from growing up with a brother who had sensibilities for rodeo buckles?] so I have explored such near-jewelry objects. Adding the buttons I've designed several versions of buttons for friends who make clothing... often trading with them to add to my own wardrobe.
The larger objects, belt buckles require making more complicated molds in order to accommodate the flow of wax into thin sections needed to minimize weight for wear-ability but which can cool more quickly & erratically in wax than the heavier parts, needed for functional strength, like the bar for attaching a leather belt. Much as I loved trying to solve such problems those pieces were never a booming part of my business.
Many ideas would begin by inspiring me to introduce one carving to satisfy a single client & suggest I would complete a logical series: carving an "A" implies carving a "B", "C" & on through the alphabet. A further complication would occur if I made another letter as a pierced version, opening the form for weight rather than a solid form for strength. Neither of these notions were completed through all 24 characters with which we spell. My life has strung me out. 'Wrung me out as I follow other livelier pursuits!
The zodiac is another such series. This mold has a non traditional notion for a lion... one leaping between two columns, whereas the Leo buckle noted previously above includes the symbol as well as the animal.
The garden of geometry has been a system constantly dancing with aesthetic inspiration & functional form. The division of space by two sides, three, or four corners, or on up the ladder to play with the wide wild variety of solid geometric forms like the dodecahedron on which the DOZENS OF DOZENS BELL is based
So this ring is a later quadrant version of the dome rings
Solitaire & engagement rings...
Saddle shaped shanks were an evolving study...
My Celtic obsession evolved as well...
Celtic knot work became the basic ground for one of my visual languages. With its measured cadences in the strength of engineered weaving... capable of infinite variability in pattern... in flat-work or sculpture... its concepts offer a richness of harmonious opportunity!
A tool I so truly appreciate that it holds much of deep metaphor for my life.
Oh, but there are other rich sources for my design. Obviously I am voraciously eclectic. Geometry is perhaps deeper at base than those Celtic variations, if not quite so "decoratively embroidered. Being beautiful as well as freeing in form & function because it is conceptual... capable of free-form wallowing in space. Hence Cosmic Geometry nudges what is ancient wisdom & religion. Symbolic numerology. language, architecture & other Graces.
These photos show a mold displaying the Celtic knot-work in reverse,
showing the function of the process of molten wax being formed by its
negative spaces.
Celtic knot work became the basic ground for one of my visual languages. With its measured cadences in the strength of engineered weaving... capable of infinite variability in pattern... in flat-work or sculpture... its concepts offer a richness of harmonious opportunity!
A tool I so truly appreciate that it holds much of deep metaphor for my life.
Oh, but there are other rich sources for my design. Obviously I am voraciously eclectic. Geometry is perhaps deeper at base than those Celtic variations, if not quite so "decoratively embroidered. Being beautiful as well as freeing in form & function because it is conceptual... capable of free-form wallowing in space. Hence Cosmic Geometry nudges what is ancient wisdom & religion. Symbolic numerology. language, architecture & other Graces.
This is one such experiment which I carved as almost a sketch... the edge proved to be uncomfortable... rather like a saw!
I appreciate the relationship between the words of studio & study.
TeachLearn has become my favorite verb
Wedding rings are traditionally an important category of design work for designers. I designed dozens. Nearly always in close consultation with the client(s). That professional intimacy became one of my hallmarks. It frequently inspired me to go beyond any usual... giving me inspiration to grow & to learn about people & how we communicate. Sometimes it drove me crazy!
I learned, perhaps because I was working in Arizona & meeting couples who were outdoorsy, how frequently landscapes, mountains, trees & clouds & rainbows figured as choices for motifs. Such more spatial, atmospheric & thus ephemeral notions became suggestive of emotions rather than the firmanent of knot-work & geometry. It became a series of lessons educating me to question the institution(s) around & of marriage itself! In fact there is so much struggle, so much stürm und drang. I came to empathize with those who were negotiating the deep history, the politics (particularly those within families), that I could at least pretend to be able to predict some eventualities.
One story could prove, if I took time to write it as psychological observation around the numerous visits to my Sedona studio from the family home in Scottsdale of the bride (& sometimes her Madam-Lafarge-like-knitting-mother), but I must skip to the denouement of the story I heard later, about how the groom had thrown his ring into the Salt River as a symbol of their divorce!
Then that story could continue as the seed for another fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm about a gold ring being found by a poor couple in a fish from a river... (except that the Salt doesn't have many fish, being usually desert-dry) inviting this fantasy writing to become a novel... or an opera, which is a word I came to frequently use when describing some of the rings I was making in that period.
I love rainbows, but didn't always pull them off successfully in metal... as this mold demonstrates.
I designed this complex design for a ring for my first Stephen [My two major long-term partners came with that name] It's center stone was a faceted alexandrite, which I surrounded by 4 corners of inlaid lapis lazuli, as I remember, then a band of small round turquoise... mixing the colors he loved.
With
this design I was another echoing the dome rings which had a moment of popularity in
the late 1960s. I like that I've titled this with an exotic name: The
Persian Clothespin Ring because of the configuration of the shank, which one could opt to be made opened, like the old wooden devices used on a clothes line... complicate wearing it even more. Ahh, what designers expect as tolerance from clients!
This design is a much later quadrant version of the dome ring notion. While it stands alone in its metallic geometry, different effort could have seen it with bands of diamonds channel-set into the crossing grooves. Diamonds are seductive with their sparkle & create additional dollar value, but what they add aesthetic value can often be debated.
Another echo of the dome rings is this Pendent mounting catching a cabochon stone to hang like an acorn. I lathed the was & then divided one band into small squares, which I then carved-off each of those 4 corners to mimic a "bead", which is a "classic" (or hackneyed?) pattern, but I found it to have use in both jewelry & in my early paintings as a symbolic notion of time's passage, day by day or hour by hour.
This art student, became interested in jewelry when I was offered the perfect part-time job in a jewelry store my sophomore year studying painting at the University of Denver, which, unfortunately, offered no classes in jewelry, which was considered a craft, not an art. That academic snobbery seems costly to me, who would point to the poor quality of the classic basic skills of art, like draftsmanship, figure-study... & building canvases grounded with stable surfaces which would last more than even a few decades, while medieval paintings are still hanging around in important museums over many centuries.
While such a loose education had much of the social aspects this Kansas farm boy wanted & needed at the time, I knew I needed to further educate myself in such essential basic skills. My self-taught skill as a jeweler is an example of the kind of ageless education that has nurtured much art. I will highly vaunt the apprenticeship system which served art & craft for centuries... along with its many also destructive aspects of ego & competition. There is my rant!
Jewelry is fraught with the dialogue between idea & glitz. [Insert my questions about diamond -- those seductive light-machines.] But I did come to appreciate the much deeper subtleties of colored stones... the minerals used to enliven jewelry for the many centuries before the technology needed to facet & polish the world's hardest into the optics which make rather actually rather common when multiplied into the sparkling piles of glitter that are 19th century court jewelry & crowns.
Those colored stones are far more rare, thus logically more valuable than a crystals used for grinding roads unless they've bee sorted multiple times before finding specimens without color large enough to cut... & then to re-sort again into a bewildering range of the qualities of nothing when it comes to color. Yes it becomes "rare", but not actually "valuable. Diamonds are a construct, an investment idea... backed by a cartel rich enough buy back the stock it has put into the market, when the price on similar stones in the open market is lower... so they simply buy them back to hold their myth as truth.
Conversely, colored stones have deeper historic mythology... both literate & symbolic. Red, blue & green talk louder than white or clear in most stories. The wide broad range of colors in minerals usually bleeding from one into the other inside the mix of conditions as fluids, dissolved into sediment or molten... has a colorful history recorded in its character. Remember, I was first a painter.
I loved designing with that color. I loved sculpting mountings to show it off. A sensitive dialog between my painter & my sculptor, with many a nod to my structural engineer. I want my work to save itself with my full attentions. Wear & tear on precious materials are a first concern, augmented by fluctuations in taste & style weigh-in while considerations whether to save a design or rebuild with the materials. Value
This design was a mounting to hold a rather large Amethyst, as I recall. Six prongs topping an open structure would allow easyier capability to be clean, as such a stone like this needs to bring color & cut intp clear display, while broadly suppouting its weight into vertical frontal position.
I was, early in my designing life of wax carving, early in my coming-out as a young Gay man, attracted to the human figue as subject matter. I will easily give a nod to an artist named Thane Riggs. Sadly I can find no history of him on the web, but I remember being influenced seeing his work before I rentedthe studio in Tlacquepacque where he had worked. The figures were rather loosly concieved in what I call a “drip & dab” loose wax style. But I was intrigued by their boldness at that time, & I felt their invitation to work with such figures. I’ve done a number of pieces with more realistic precision, both male & female. This ring design celebrates a particularly graphic notion.
These photos show a mold displaying the Celtic knotwork in reverse, showing the function of the process of molten wax being formed by its negative spaces.
ENOUGH!
I trust that you can appreciate what is an endless process requiring a hard finish. At least to this blog post. There will always be more stories. Always more history of the work around the GRBBells. About my evolution beyond...
