Bird inspired things

Here are a couple of bird inspired bits, relating to my residency at Whitby Museum.  The museum has a large collection of Victorian stuffed birds (I am sure there is another name for them!).  When I first began my residency I spent quite a lot of time sketching and doodling in that section of the museum, partly as I had always ignored them (a kind of dislike of old stuffed creatures I suppose).  Anyway, over the year I have become quite fond of them and developed an obsession with the way in which birds have been used as motifs and patterns on objects everywhere.  I made a few glass bird shaped beads which have been in my box of bits since last spring.  Anyway, I have now made these.  The left hand piece is actually a clasp for a bracelet I am planning.  The charm is based upon various ceramic jars and pots in the museum that are long-legged birds.  I think they are possibly from Africa originally - but I did also sketch some bird shaped ceramic vessels in the Etruscan museum in Rome while I was on holiday.

The glass bead is my first successful attempt as making a lamp worked glass bead over a silver core.

Wire bird

Well here it is fastened to the collar of my cardigan, my latest experiment is a little wire bird brooch. So now I've got that out of my system maybe I can get on

Glorious hands and the hand of glory

Whitby Museum has a very popular object called the Hand of Glory.  It is ironic that the myth surrounding it is about sleep as there I was at 4am last night wide awake and thinking about it.  I should have just gone to work at around 10.30pm when I began doodling birds in my notes and perhaps I would have worked out my ideas then ........ instead of later lying awake wondering whether I could make a wire bird small enough to be an earring.  Anyway, there I was at 4.20am with Earl Grey tea and my notebook thinking about hands......... glorious hands!

Hands are of course important to the making process and at some point in my residency I will almost certainly start making bracelets or bangles, as they have always been a key part of any collection of jewellery I have designed and made.  The large size of my own hands originally influenced me wanting to make bangles as I could never find any to fit.

I then started thinking about the way we use our hands, particularly in western society - we shake hands, kiss hands, hold hands, using them to write (or more often these days to type and text) we wave in greeting; to attract attention and goodbye.  They are unique, each with their own set of marks of our personal histories - fingerprints and rings signifying our personality and our attachments.  I recall once reading that wearing a ring for any length of time leaves a mark on the bone not just in the flesh of the wearer and also remember being fascinated by a necklace of wire hands in a museum somewhere - was it in the Ashmolean? ..... which brings me back, full circle to the wire.

For my visitors book at the museum I would like people to draw around their own hands on paper, then write their name, date and favourite thing about the museum within the outline - maybe a small drawing in the palm?  I will then cut them out and stick them into my book, which is in the process of being bound by Brian Cole www.thecastlebindery.co.uk and they will become a record of my days at the museum.

And so to sleep...... maybe mandrake would help :)

 

Birds and feathers

I spent Tuesday afternoon looking more closely at the bird collection in Whitby Museum.  I did various sketches  particularly of the interesting patterns of the feathers forming irregular triangles and ripples and waves.  There were many beautiful forms and colours and I took quite a few photographs that will help me later on in my project.  I then went around looking at representations of birds in other parts of the collection and found interesting bird patterns of inlay in a gunstock, ceramic birds, prints in the pages of a Japanese book and of course all the birds in the Noah's ark.  I came away really inspired but with a head full of feathers....... all ideas that need to be sorted out.