Enter: Celtic Knots

I needed some "Muggle" jewelry to stock in the brick-and-mortar gallery that carries my work, and decided to go with Celtic knots.  (Still pretty geeky, yeah, but not as geeky as Gallifreyan.)

I've tried several construction approaches at this point, and they've each had their own problems.  It's relatively easy to cast a solid knot, and there's a lot of those on the market -- in silver, though,  not bronze -- so I wanted my pieces to exploit the sculptural aspect of my medium and be different than cast pieces would be.  That's been... challenging, let's say (instead of the bevy of four-letter words I've used) and has involved a lot of fail (oops, there's a four-letter word anyway). 

Basically I'm building the knot up in layers and wedding the ends before the piece is fired.  But there's a tricky balance of keeping the clay soft enough to be pliable so bends happen without breaking, but dry enough to hold its shape and not stick together in unintentional ways -- I want to maintain the integrity of each layer and keep it separate from a strand that crosses above or below.  The thing about Celtic knots is that they are meant to be a single, unbroken line in a loop, not a lump of a shape.  There shouldn't be a front and back - it should be three-dimensional from both sides.

Once the knot is together -- not a guarantee, I'm running about 50% completion before there's too many breaks and I have to start over -- then I fire it.  Turns out my temperature and timing schedule varies depending on the thickness of the bronze.  Which: d'uh, right?  But in order to clue into that fact, I had to melt a batch of knots first -- they're thinner and more slender than the keychain disks I've been firing so my schedule had to be adjusted.  Oops.

The good news is that when it all works the result is great.  They're exactly what I had in mind when I began this merry adventure, which doesn't always happen.  I'm finishing the pieces off with leather cording and bronze chain; it adds to the ancient look.  There are pictures of different pieces over in a Facebook album if you'd like to see others.  (Or put a note in the comments and I'll send you pictures.)

If you're interested in ordering one of these pieces as a holiday gift, please let me know as soon as you can.  Given the time and complication factor, last-minute orders may be problematic to fill.  Though let's hope the learning curve levels off, yeah?

Kiln Report The First

Well, nothing melted. :)

So far my experience with my little baby kiln has been completely positive.  The learning curve has been... curvy, but that's not the kiln's fault.



Let's admit it: life is more fun this way.

The biggest single advantage is the cycle time.  The kiln I've been using was made for glass work, and glass has to be heated and cooled slowly or it cracks; glass kilns are therefore set to slowly ramp up temperature, hold the temp for a certain amount of time, and then sloooooowly ramp down.  All summer, each firing I've done has taken 8-9 hours to get through.  Metal isn't that fussy, but there wasn't any way to change the kiln's basic set-up.

MY kiln, on the other hand, has a jillion pre-set programs, including separate menus for metal clay, glass, and porcelain.  On a metal cycle, the kiln ramps as fast as it can, holds for as long as I tell it, then shuts off.  The whole thing takes about three hours.  Dramatically increases production time, lemmee tell you.  Also pulls a lot less power, so costs less, which is a yay.
I originally thought I'd hit the right firing temp exactly right the first try -- I put a note in my kiln log that said: all perfect! <3.  Now it says: all perfect! <3 because when I sat down to polish the second batch, the piece I was working on crumbled to little clay bits.  It looked done, and I hadn't pressed hard enough to test it properly.

At least it's only a kiln and not a nuclear power plant.

So then I learned about re-firing, and somehow (!) managed not to over-cook everything and err in the opposite direction.  Delayed win, but still a W.  Also, the convenience of having the kiln in my house can not be overstated.  I had to re-fire some pieces three times... but I still got that done in a day and had way more control than I'd have had with the previous kiln.  I'm sure no one's shocked to hear that in Monique-world, more control = more happy.

I keep threatening to post pics of, y'know, Actual Jewelry, but haven't.  Hopefully that will happen next week.

Have a great weekend!