MINERALARTS: Iron and Thorn

MORE copper…I bought this picture jasper cabochon because it immediately reminded me of a lens of groundwater under the sand - lots of warm brown iron oxide with just a hint of blue (from reduced iron).  I liked the way it was drilled as a bead so it would retain its soft, natural look - a silver bezel setting would have overwhelmed this subtle stone.  It’s strung on New Mexico turquoise beads.  I had to grind off the pointed ends and polish them so the beads would fit together better.  Lots of green in the turquoise, which is less popular than the usual bright pale blue, but there is a nice mix of colors, both in the turquoise itself and in the iron oxide matrix.  The strand fastens to the iron link with copper wire hooks, and a copper wire ornament enlivens the back.  The five-fold spiral reminds me of the flower of sacred datura.

Forged iron and copper necklaces are my most time-consuming and intricate metalwork projects, but they are spectacular, durable, and fun to wear.  This copper chain with pods and cone bells took far longer than I expected, mostly because it requires more polishing than iron.   Made entirely of hot-forged and cold-hammered recycled copper wire in various sizes (14, 10, 6, and 8 gauge).  The bright bare Red Metal sparkles against a copper ore boulder.  It will look better as it tarnishes with wear, since no newly-polished shine can compare with the beautiful warm brown glow of heavily-worn copper.

“LADY OF THE LAKE”

Fossil mammoth ivory with blue vivianite stripe, Madagascar “Ocean Wave” picture jasper, Indonesian basalt lava beads, tumbled aquamarine chips, copper tube beads and wire, hot-forged copper curly cone, sterling silver.  Custom necklace for a friend.  I cut the mammoth ivory to match the stripe on the jasper cabochon.  Fastens at the front with the copper hooks.

Sometimes the omens appear in clusters.  Today a coyote ran across the road in front of me and (oddly) didn’t look back.  This week I found three snakeskins, all inaccessible in some way:  One hidden under stones (revealed when I was planting agaves), one entwined deep among the daggerlike leaves of a yucca in my yard, and one old and worn but not yet shed, on a big rattlesnake that I met in a sandy wash yesterday.  Clearly, it’s time for me to leave some things behind.  Here are some iron items that might help:

The Vulture Dancer earrings have double curly cone bells and vulture leg bones.  Two high-carbon steel threaductter knives rest on a piece of snakeskin.  The left one is a bird claw, and has a blade and a seamripper.  The right one (quite a bit thicker and heavier) is a cat claw, 2.5″ long.  Since they are forged, ground, drilled, and polished, they are a lot more work than they look - and perhaps more than they’re worth, considering their rough appearance.   Perhaps Atropos wears one of these as an amulet, or keeps it hidden in her workbasket. 

The two great horned owl nests that I pass on my morning walk are active now, with three young birds in each.  I feel honored to have two nests so close to my house, and watching them has become a wonderful spring tradition.  The young birds watch us with suspicion:

Even this Needlespine Cactus (Echinomastus erectocentrus var. erectocentrus) is a reminder that this time of year belongs to the owls:

April marks the first anniversary of our exploration of the Empire Mountains.  This is a small mountain range (geologically, the northeastern extension of the Santa Ritas) and the highway passes very close to it, but access to the interior is only by hiking and (to a limited extent) by 4WD vehicle.  We have found unique plant communities, several rare plants, and a great diversity of common desert, grassland, and mountain flora.  I have been developing a plant list for the area (as far as I know, this has never been done).  

http://www.mineralarts.com/cactus/EmpireMtsFlora.html

Although not intended to illustrate every species, the webpage includes photos of some of the showier flowers, and will eventually include photos and descriptions of typical Empire Mt. plant communities. 

Here’s a new set of six forged iron cone bells that are designed to be tied onto a drum, a bag, or anything that needs some earthy metallic rattling energy.  The three small cones have a very high, tinkly sound, and the larger ones have a more assertive clank. They are photographed on a copper/iron ore boulder in my yard.

I’ve been refining my forging skill with the Moon Metal.  Silver holds more tension than my “comfort metals”, iron and copper.  So working with it requires a mix of emotional intensity, fearlessness, and desire for change.  In other words, I do it when old attitudes or routines don’t work anymore.  I’m not really “at home” with silver, but I’ve learned to greet it as an old friend and challenger on the road.

The wand/hairpin is 5.5″ long, hot-forged from a sterling silver rod with the same techniques that I use for iron wands.  The pod knife is a work in progress, since it still needs a chain and a bag.  The blade is high-carbon steel.  The pod is heavy silver sheet with a “spine” of forged silver and a copper wire rivet.  The earrings are turquoise (natural nugget from Mexico, bead from Tibet) with Mexican pink ceramic beads. 

Rainbow Lion was my big project for March.  The magic in this one is a bit more “white light” than my usual work, and it will be reassuring for me to get back to my stones and knives.  But I found this colorful yarn when I was working on the Snow Lion, and it was an irresistible match for the white silk/hemp fabric.  This is a particularly cuddly lion (though very sturdy, like the others) with a very thick, soft mane.  The yarn is a cotton/silk/rayon blend.  The blanket adds a lot of color, but (unlike the other two lions) he looks just as good without it.  Description and more photos are here:

http://www.mineralarts.com/artwork/greenliontoy.html

I hope this lion provides comfort after a storm for somebody.  This was a difficult month for me, but I’ll wait until after the New Moon to look for my own sign of celestial renewal.

Today I have a Temperance story for the week of the Full Moon and the Vernal Equinox.  In the Ironwing Tarot, the Temperance card is titled “Quench” and shows a newly-forged iron bowl being cooled in water, creating steam that melts the overhanging melting icicles.  It is an image of completion, consecration, and all the contrasting elements that create a mysterious organic union of iron and oil.

The day after last month’s lunar eclipse, I got an e-mail from a customer who had bought one of my triple cone bell pendants and a custom-order bell a few years ago.  The bell is pictured on my website - it has a very large clapper that is a substantial bell in itself, and I have not made another one like it.  My customer used and enjoyed the bells for several years.  Then her house burned to the ground.  She was able to find the bells but was afraid they were permanently damaged, and was writing to ask if I could do anything with them.  Of course I told her to send them back - I was very honored that she had salvaged them and still liked them enough to want them fixed!  I had expected the iron to be weakened, deformed, or even partly burned, but when the package arrived, I saw that the big bell was merely coated with rust and ashes.  It was easily cleaned up with a wire brush.  The small bells were clogged with ashes and bits of melted plastic that quickly vanished when I put them in the forge.  After polishing, everything was returned to the forge, quenched in oil, and good as new!  I added a new copper spiral to the pendant, and added a chain and miniature bell to replace the heavy coiled hook (which I’d never liked much) on the bell.  Here are the burned, rusty bells before rehabilitation:

Here are the refinished bells, ready to go home (they’ll have a nice bag, too):

I thought of the Temperance card on Sunday while I quenched and blackened the bells in oil as sleet rattled on the roof - a late winter storm brought snow to the mountains and a bit of rain to encourage the desert wildflowers. 

For this Moon, I took a break from designing oracles and took a commission for a shaman’s doll - this Tibetan Snow Lion, with blanket, iron bells and tent stakes, and shaman’s mirror.  I enjoyed making him so much that I want to make another lion, but I’ll probably take my time about finishing that one, and get back to other projects.

Description and more photos on this page:

http://www.mineralarts.com/artwork/greenliontoy.html

Last weekend we hiked in the hills south of our house, where grass, cactus, and thorny shrubs give way to agaves and desert oaks.  A hundred years ago, there were several active copper mines in the area, and while hiking we see glory holes, ore piles, old dirt roads, and a shiny black heap of slag that looks like a small mountain of obsidian.  I can imagine what it must have looked like at night, through the dusky coal smoke of the smelter - the molten metal glowing white, then darkening to red as the copper bars cooled; the fiery orange slag splashing onto the pile, reeking of sulfur - until one night around 1910, when the inevitable happened and a forest fire destroyed the smelter, and gave the land back to the yuccas and oaks.  But we have the collector’s instinct that drew the first miners here, and we pick through the slag and bring home a treasure trove of tiny glass drips that look like bones, twigs, or strange machine parts.  Some may find their way into jewelry, but I’ll just put most of them in a small copper bowl.