A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Issue #46: February '11 - Cont'd
Seeing the Future: Copper Braille Jewelry
Copper pendant with braille lettering.
Photograph courtesy of Kelly Fehr
“I learned from them how to fix things, problem-solve and be a creative person,” she says. By high school she knew she wanted to become a professional artist and in college she fell in love with metals like copper and silver, jewelry-making and design. Eschewing larger work for small, she began to craft pendants, bracelets and earrings. She took a job at Lenox, the tablewear company, but her first passion was always jewelry.
“You may have a sculpture in your yard, but jewelry is so much more personal,” she says. “It’s your own portable sculpture.”
Although she loved copper and bronze, the costs for the metals were high, so she opted instead for metal clays. “It gave me minimal investment in tools and supplies, and a huge opportunity for shape-form design and learning a new material. The bronze clay rocked my world.”
Copper and bronze clays have a similar consistency to Play-Doh Fehr says. Clay is mixed with pure copper or bronze powder. After a jewelry piece is crafted and finished, it’s kiln fired at 1,600 degrees for three hours and during that process the copper powder melds together, forming a solid piece amounting to a copper density of 95 percent. The powdered copper is held together with an organic binder which burns away allowing the metal to form. Fehr then uses liver of sulfur to oxidize the copper, polishing the pieces with an abrasive brush to highlight the copper and bronze accents.
Braille Copper earrings.
Photograph courtesy of Kelly Fehr
But things took a turn when her niece, Emily, born blind, prodded her to create something unique for her, so Fehr began making jewelry with braille. She uses a syringe to make the Braille dots on top of the copper pendent, “almost like a cake decorator,” she says. “Just because someone is blind or visually impaired, doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate nice things,” she says. “The people who are buying my pieces respond to the same level of sophistication and design.”
Today, the idea of the Braille pendants has taken off. She has produced high volume pieces for stores as well as individual pieces for clients and the public. She has sold her work in all 50 states as well as Switzerland, Canada and Japan. She even created 300 special pieces for a blind theatre group in Los Angeles as a fundraiser. She’s still surprised about this path which has taken her in a direction she wouldn’t have dreamed of.
“I found a niche that’s extremely satisfying,” she admits about her Braille jewelry. “A blind person wearing my copper jewelry in the sighted world makes it something for everyone to share and experience."
Resources:
Jewelry in Braille, Kelly Fehr, (631) 875-3558
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2-Roses Studio: A Lifelong Journey of Exploration and Experimentation
HiTek Fillagree necklace.
Photograph courtesy of John and Corliss Rose
Although they primarily use exotic found objects, copper and brass play a big role in the work they create at 2-Roses.
“We purchase brass, copper and bronze in sheets, tubes and wire,” says John. “We fabricate and occasionally cast it. We recycle brass and industrial parts, using them whole or in part as compositional elements. Usually the majority of a piece is made of copper and brass.”
Their Botanical Series Brooches employ two-stage dies, which they make themselves.
“It takes several passes through the hydraulic press to achieve the rough volume and shape which is then refined with chasing and repousse,” says John. “The shape is cut out by hand or with a pancake die, pierced and properly aligned. We use a combination of soldering, riveting or other forms of cold joining to construct component parts of the botanicals. Once assembled, the brooch is prepped for applying color on metal finish using successive coats of acrylic paint overlaid with colored pencils, metallic powders, dies and a polymer sealant resulting in a durable finish.”
Western Style Engraved earrings.
Photograph courtesy of John and Corliss Rose
“Most of it is kiln fired, but we also play with torch firing, currently trying different layering and textural techniques incorporating a wide range of additives to enamel powders,” says John. “Copper is highly suited for this development process as it has known characteristics."
Because of John's inventiveness, 2-Roses Studio features a complete machine shop. He modified a cheap metal working hammer dug out of the trash and constructed many tools that save wear and tear on wrists and hands. Corliss likes to say that John wouldn't spend ten cents on a screw when he can go to the studio and make one for ten dollars. Always resourceful, the Roses even obtained old, open bronze dies buried under a pile of junk on a dirt floor in India.
With their wonderful sense of humor, artistic experimentation and philosophy "trash is a failure of imagination," John and Corliss Rose continue their exploratory journey.
2-Roses have exhibited at the Victoria & Albert, The Hermitage, Laguna Museum of Art and numerous art institutions around the country.
Resources:
2-Roses Studio, 1644 S. Clementine St., Anaheim, CA, (714) 778-5336
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Copper in the Arts: EVENTS
- Palm Beach Jewelry, Art, and Antique Show
Feb 15, '13 - Feb 18, '13 - Native Expressions: Dave McGary’s Bronze Realism
Mar 7, '13 - Jun 30, '13 - Evolving Character Head Demonstration with John Coleman
Mar 9, '13 - Mar 9, '13 - More Upcoming Events...
Copper in the Arts: HISTORY
Warfare Crafted Into Works of Art
Capper artillery shell casings decorated with copper sun, stars, the Ten Commandments tablets and the skyline of Jerusalem.
Photograph courtesy of Jane Kimball
The trench art term, according to Jane Kimball, author of Trench Art: An Illustrated History, was coined during World War I by popular French magazine, Les Pays de France.
“They sponsored a series of competitions for the best art pieces made by French soldiers, l’artisanat des tranchées,” says Kimball. “Translated into English as trench art, this term has been used ever since to describe a wide variety of war souvenirs crafted by soldiers.”
World War I spawned a network of trenches dug from Belgium to Switzerland. Millions of brass-cased artillery shells would be fired by the armies of the allies and the Central Powers. “Troops were rotated out of the front line into reserve trenches far from the fighting and, with the litter of previous battles all around, found ample material with which to work,” says Kimball. “Other shell casings were decorated by prisoners of war and by convalescent soldiers.”
Shell casings decorated by Belgian and French soldiers were first sent home to relatives; the allies then began to sell them as souvenirs to British and American soldiers as souvenirs, who then began designing their own trench art.
Kimball says brass was the “ideal canvas for the creation of artistic vases.” The shell casings were engraved with names of battles, figures or a soldier’s war service, and the background would feature a zigzag “wigglework” pattern.
Melted lead or sand were poured into casings, annealed and heated several times, and embossed or hammered.
“Early shells were engraved or embossed with everything from tools made from bedsprings or screwdrivers,” says Kimball. “Later in the war, commercial firms in Paris sold embossing tools and paper patterns.”
American soldiers of Company A of the 23rd Engineers Corps decorating shell casings.
Photograph courtesy of Jane Kimball
After World War I, students at the Bezalel School of Arts & Crafts decorated shell casings with Jewish images and scenes of the Holy Land.
“In World War II,” says Kimball, “the American Seabees, a branch of the U.S. Navy, traveled from place to place building roads, air strips and landing docks to support American troops. They developed a cottage industry in trench art, collecting spent shell casings at one port and decorated them for sale at their next port.”
From World War II, trench art became more obsolete during the Korean and Vietnam wars. “And the Iraq and Afghanistan war has changed again,” says Kimball. “Soldiers now have turned most of their creative talents to creating blogs on cyberspace.”
But Kimball says contemporary artists like Rik Ryon of Poperinge, Belgium, have kept the spirit of these warfare works of art alive through his copper sculptures made from original World War I shell driving bands.
Resources:
Trench Art of the Great War And Related Souvenirs by Jane A. Kimball
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Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Rare Rembrandt Self-Portrait Rediscovered - February 07, 2011
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669) Rembrandt Laughing. Oil on copper, about 1628. 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in private Collection.
Photograph courtesy of Hazlitt Gooden & Fox, London
“This is one of the most exciting artistic rediscoveries in recent years,” said Museum Director Brian Kennedy. “Rembrandt Laughing is one of the first and most joyful examples of the artist’s autobiography in paint.”
A century and a half after Rembrandt’s death, the portrait was mistakenly thought to be by his older contemporary Frans Hals, and it was reproduced as Hals’s work in an engraving. Some scholars of the 20th Century realized it was a case of mistaken identity—that the painting shown in the engraving was in fact a Rembrandt—but couldn’t prove their case because the original was “lost.”
The painting emerged and made headlines in 2007 after the English family who owned it for the past 100 years decided to sell it through a local auction house. The painting was attributed to “a follower of Rembrandt,” with an estimated value of only $1,600–$2,400. However, art dealers recognized its quality and importance, and bidding went to more than a thousand times that amount to $4.5 million.
“Still, that price was a bargain,” said Lawrence Nichols, TMA’s William Hutton curator, European and American painting and sculpture before 1900. “The painting’s estimated value today is well in excess of what it sold for at auction.”
The painting has been on display in Dallas and Denver museums in the past several months to give selected American audiences a chance to view the spectacular find. Kennedy asked the current owner for the loan during a visit the two had last fall in Toledo.
Kennedy and Nichols, both passionate about Dutch painting, will be lecturing on Rembrandt Laughing, along with TMA’s two other Rembrandt paintings, Young Man with Plumed Hat and Man in a Fur-Lined Coat, in coming months.
Resources:
Toledo Museum of Art, 2445 Monroe St., Toledo, OH, (419) 255-8000
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