THIS IS IT, Master...

Here IT IS!

[Double click the photos to enlarge them.]

The bell holding the poetry of James Broughton about which I've been posting the last month has been cast & carefully finished out into its new metal state! There is always a huge relief to see the work of many many hours secured in a safely solid, more durable material than the wax which relative softness allows me to carve.

I wrote earlier this year about this stage of raw casting.

While this photograph is a bit brutal in showing the less than ideal surface...

The casting is basically sound & looks quite legible after I began working the surface. Here in mid-process I used ink to darken the background as a test to help see which details needed strengthening

I vulcanized the silicon molds around the masters, [about which process you may read more here] of the THIS IS IT Bell, the FROG RING & the MEDIUM LILY HOOP EARRING before making photographs of the finished masters. I cut those molds this evening & look forward to seeing how the first production waxes look when I begin injecting them tomorrow.

Meanwhile here is the FROG perching on the edge of new life in metal...