Art – Bleubug

February 16, 2010

Lost My Marbles

I’ve taken up a new hobby in which I can utilize my speck of creativity and natural talent for following instructions. I am such a renaissance man! In honesty I’m more like the guy who got paid a tiny amount to grind the pigment that was mixed with others by a paint maker who the supplied some illustrious Italian master.

The hobby mentioned above is marbling paper. Marbled end-sheets are something I’ve always loved seeing when perusing an old book. The patterns always seemed to be works of ordered randomness with sweep and coloration that are most pleasing. A month or so ago I was at a hotel where an artisan conference had a room where people were selling their wares. One woman marbled not just paper but fabric and leather and I found my love for it hadn’t diminished.

After that I went home and looked up marbling on the web like any good resident of the 21^st century would. The process didn’t seem to involve any skills I don’t have like drawing, painting, or imagination. That’s not to say people with those qualifications don’t make excellent marbled papers but just that I could probably put together something that didn’t offend. The next step was to get the supplies and being who I am the research took several hours. I peered at many sites and compared prices and inventory. In the end I got a starter kit from Galen Berry who is a well-known marbler in the United States. I picked out the paint colors I wanted and zipped off an email. Due to the cold weather they didn’t want to ship the stuff until the thermometer took an upward stretch so I had to wait a week or so. Despite the hesitation it arrived the day after a major snow storm which meant that my snow day could be filled with learning how to work this magic.

I’m not going to bore you too much with a history of marbled paper (and other substrates) but I will throw a few facts in here. It began with a process called suminagashi in China over 2,000 years ago but is associated with Japan since it was practiced widely there. The technique traveled the silk trade routes and eventually landed in Turkey. This brought forth the kind of patterns we most often think of when visualizing marbling but the Turkish art of Ebru is far more than that and is worth taking a look at. The video below shows an artist creating some of these works.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgg0GIfbszg

Eventually the technique migrated to Europe in the 17^th century when travelers were exposed to both the process and the end result. Artisans guarded their techniques but late in the mid-19^th century a book was published laying out the process for all to see.

While on the topic of the process it’s really deceptively simple. Paint or ink is floated on top of a liquid and then are manipulated using tools to make the patterns. In my case I use acrylic paints applied to a thickened pool of water. The thickening is accomplished using carrageenan which is the stuff that also is used to make foods goopy. The inks are applied in several ways with brushes made out of broom straw (actually, they are shaken and don’t touch the liquid) or eye droppers. After that there is a bevy of tools to rake, comb, curl, and speckle until you get a design you love.

Below are a few pictures from one of my sessions just to give you a rough idea of a few steps in the process. I’ve been having fun and hope to improve my skills with time.

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January 20, 2010December 2, 2022

Ars Gratia Artless

Like so many people with not a trace of artistic ability I’m fascinated by the people who can visualize and create beautiful things. I have a friend who is an art collector and I envy her since she can surround herself with items which no amount of viewing will ever remove the wonder from. I don’t want it to sound like there is no creative work around where I sit since a great deal of pug art hangs on the walls (of course) as well as some fine items by artist friends. In the latter category I wanted to show a few new things that have landed here.

Rhona Carantes came to my attention when I saw some pen cases she created shown on a fountain pen user group. A trip to her site proved her to be a creative and talented woman whose canvas was leather. Working from a forest abode in the Philippine city of Baguio she hand tools a variety of items all of which are stunning. I commissioned a clock from her and when received was very impressed by its design and the workmanship exceeding my expectations. Afterwards I asked Rhona in passing if she could create something new for me: a pen box. Before I knew it the box was done which was notable since it was around the time a terrible typhoon hit the Baguio area. Considering the few rough ideas I had supplied the final product was impressive.

I might also mention that Rhona is a fascinating person to correspond with. Her twin daughters are not only artists as well but practitioners of a Filipino martial art called Kali. Connected to that is her work making sheaths for hand crafted locally made knives. It’s really hard to believe she is also a grandmother which leads me to think there is something in that forest which maintains youth.

The last thing I want to share was an unexpected birthday gift. I’ve blogged about the artist Chris Gryder before and one benefit of being his friend is that sometimes you are lucky enough to be surprised with some original art. He works in ceramics and I’m adding this wonderful new piece below to my small Gryder gallery.

September 11, 2009

Moving Along

We’re always moving. Even at rest our heart pumps, eyeballs flit, and neurons fire away constantly. The idea of time is intertwined with that fact and like our bodies it continues to move on even if we momentarily don’t realize it. That’s why it’s always seemed odd to me that a device created to relate the passage of time can come to a complete stop. A timepiece’s working parts are even called a “movement” and that name doesn’t change when a battery loses its charge or a spring winds down.

You’ve probably gathered that for a change I’m going to bore you (the select group that doesn’t move on to play Farmville when you get to this point) with a rare post about watches. I’m not going to say much about how watches work or were used but I’m briefly going to talk about the art found in a watch. Pomposity here I come.

In the distant past watches were the prized possessions of the rich since they were hand crafted, rare, and of high cost. Even as they began to be in the reach of the average person you still saw a great deal of attention paid to the elements of design and construction. Middle grade to high grade watches made in the United States during the late 19^th century may have been mass produced but a good deal of hand labor was spent in assuring that they were both functionally and aesthetically pleasing. Things that were never seen by the owner, such as the movement itself, were often elaborately decorated using a technique called “damaskeening” and “flashing”. Damaskeening was where a skilled worker had a machine which spun pointed wooden dowels (or another material) coated with abrasive to create patterns in the metal of the watch mechanism itself. The procedure created a kind of swirl which stood out from the surrounding area. Very often when you examine an upper tier movement from the golden age of U.S. watch production you’ll find that even areas only seen if the watch is disassembled have been embellished with elaborate patterns or close circles that look a little like fish scales. Flashing is where a contrasting color is applied to the movement which highlights the damaskeening. This is usually a very thin layer of gold.

The movements themselves were designed to be pleasant to look at with curves and circles harmoniously incorporated. Smaller details like the written information on them was also done with flair in elaborate lettering. Some even had decorative elements like flowers engraved in the metal.

It’s this mechanical beauty that made me start to collect watches such as the ones below. All the timepieces pictured in the gallery are American 12 size late 19^th to early 20^th century pieces. Even if I had no idea what they did I’d find the craftsmanship appealing to look at.

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September 2, 2009

Grateful To Not Be Listened To

This is another post about gifts that generous and (way too) nice people have taken the time and effort to give me. I have no idea why they bother to do so since as previously mentioned I’m just a distant curmudgeon who doesn’t really merit it. Still they gleefully ignore that completely and send things through my force field of grumps.

P1060346-151 August 25, 2009 1 — Well, some things are an open book. Notice the red ribbon.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I took some bindery courses and actually bound a few books by hand (I’ve still got some). I know that this takes more art than science to wind up with results that are attractive as well as useful. Mona is a person that that can craft journals and other bound items of great beauty. She sent me the one below which I’m indebted to her for. The amazing thing is she just started doing this not very long ago. It’s a sideline to her other hobbies like knitting and fountain pen mania but I’m certainly happy she took it up.

P1060319-124 August 25, 2009 1 — A lovely Mona brand journal

My work hasn’t taken me far afield in quite some time but my friend Caloy’s livelihood takes him places I’ve both dreamt about and only vaguely familiar with. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the latter. At a conference there recently he picked up a locally crafted embroidered pouch for me. It’s the perfect size to hold the stack of postcards I keep and the postage for them. It’s also strikingly attractive.

P1060393-198 August 25, 2009 1 — Perfect for postcards.

I never know how to receive a token of friendship in person so I usually fidgit and make some inane quip about how someone else would be more worthy of the item. Use your imagination and insert that image here.

P1060298-103 August 25, 2009 1 — When taking these pictures I saw this. Reinforces my hatred of geese.

August 12, 2009

Heart of Glass

While in Chicago I visited the Smith Stained Glass Museum on Navy Pier. I love stained glass and Chicago was a center for that craft in the United States. Most people know about Frank Lloyd Wright and his famous windows but the museum holds more than just examples of those. There are four focuses for its exhibits: victorian, prairie, modern, and contemporary. It’s the only museum in the U.S. to focus solely on stained glass.

I hope you enjoyed the factoids. I took some pictures that day which are below.

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May 8, 2009February 8, 2013

Gryder at Hollins

Last Tuesday my friend Chris Gryder had an art opening at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. I attended it and took a few pictures, some of which I’ve stuck here for perusal. Chris showed older work as well as part of a larger installation for Florida State University he had just completed. He does some amazing work but don’t tell him I said that.

March 13, 2009

Look, Up In The Sky…

Not many interesting things happen in the small city I live near but occasionally either at the Virginia Museum of Natural History or the Piedmont Arts Association an exhibit will pass through that is worth seeing. One rolled in last week called “Theater of the Sky” so I dropped by on the opening night. It turned out to be a display Japanese kites and kite related uikyo-e (pictures of the floating world) woodblock prints. Uikyo-e refers to a school in 17th to 20th century Japan that sought to depict the life of the contemporary urban merchant class and their entertainments in an idyllic fashion. Along with the rise of large metropolitan areas this newly wealthy and influential segment developed and shaped an environment unlike any before. Not constricted by old class and social rules the term “floating world” was coined to describe it.

"Today's Rising Kites" 1866 by Mitani Sadahiro. — "Today's Rising Kites" by Mitani Sadahiro, 1866.

The show was sponsored by The Drachen Foundation which, believe it or not, is an NPO dedicated to the diffusion of kite knowledge and education. The exhibit briefly discussed place that kites and kite flying had in the uikyo-e. Flown at first to bring good fortune or ward off evil spirits they were decorated with symbols of prosperity, good luck, or fertility. Later they found use for communications, divining future harvests, and eventually for recreational uses. Large groups of enthusiasts would gather and populate the sky with these colorfully rendered kites especially in Edo (now known as Tokyo).

"Kite-flying Competition in the Blue Sky" triptych (click for larger image).

The display kites were made by the Japanese kite master Mikio Toki who has been constructing them since 1973. You can see his amazing talent with woodblock printed kites here at his site. The ones in this exhibit were commissioned to replicate an 1864 triptych (Kite-flying Competition in the Blue Sky) featuring popular kabuki actors by the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Yoshiharu. The vibrant colors and beauty of the traditional Edo kites is astounding and seeing them fly would have been a wonderful spectacle. However, I had to settle with craning my neck to see them as they hung from the dropped ceiling. Oh well.

The "awesome glare" of the Kabuki actor on the right is called nirami.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger image of the kites:

March 4, 2009

Restoring Black Hard Rubber Using The World’s Longest Acronym

There’s no way getting around the fact that a lot of vintage pens are made of hard rubber. Before the dawn of plastics it was one of the best materials for the job. Light and strong it’s made when rubber is mixed with sulfur and then cured by heat. Once it’s lathed into a cap and barrel it was often made more esthetically pleasing with heat embossed decoration. Eventually brighter colors, sometimes in patterns, were developed to spruce the “any color you want as long as it’s black” pens up. All those benefits made hard rubber popular for many years until it lost the battle with the early celluloid plastics.

There are negatives as well to hard rubber. One of the worst is that over time the material will discolor to brown or sickly olive green. This is caused by exposure to UV light which oxidizes it as well as exposure to moisture which bonds with free sulfur and creates sulfuric acid on the surface. Either way with time it’s enviable that the surface will sooner or later take on the new and unattractive cast.

It used to be you couldn’t do much for an old pen that wasn’t shiny black anymore but accept it. Buffing the surface exposed undamaged rubber but at the cost of loss of pattern or imprint detail. Black paint lost detail as well by building up a coating on the exterior. If you lucked out and got a mint BHR (black hard rubber) pen you kept it in the dark or used it and took your chances.

Happily a few years ago two methods arrived that promised to restore your drab discolored pens to black beauties. With the process called G-10 a dye is infused into the material and gives it new color. It’s not reversible after application and has to be performed by someone who offers this service. Proponents claim that this makes the newly treated rubber resistant to further damage by blocking UV light and closing the pores in the material against moisture. The other option is Pensbury Manor Black Hard Rubber Pen Potion No. 9 (known from here on out as PMBHRPPNo9) which is a self applied dye. It’s a treatment which is lightly absorbed into the pen’s surface to blacken and protect it in a similar manner to the first process. The coloring can be reversed by using an ammonia/water combination to remove it.

Why are we discussing this? Well, I have a Wahl eyedropper that exhibits a very slight amount of discoloration on one side of the barrel and cap. It was bothering me a bit and since this is not a rare pen I thought I’d finally give re-blackening a try. Since I like to do things myself as well as save money the PMBHRPPNo9 seemed to fit the bill. I ordered it and when it came I decided to first try it on an old heavily discolored pen cap I had in the parts pile. What follows are pictures and text showing this test and the results.

Below is what the PMBHRPPNo9 looks like brushed onto white paper. The washed out look of it doesn’t lead you to believe it will do much to darken the hard rubber.

I used a knock out block and a dowel to hold the cap in an upright position for application and drying (it’s recommended you let the treated parts cure for 8 hours). In the first picture you can see the PMBHRPPNo9, block, brush and untouched cap.

If you look at the close up of the cap you can get an idea of how much it’s turned brown. Before starting you need to clean the parts in an ammonia and water solution so it will be free of oils and other surface contaminants. If you don’t the dye may not bond properly.

Application is as simple as dipping the brush into the solution and applying it in long, even strokes.

After curing I did a little buffing with a cloth to shine up the new surface. In this picture you can see that the section I worked on did indeed get much blacker and shiner.

While not looking exactly “from the factory” fresh, the part of the cap PMBHRPPNo9 was applied to is much more appealing. Of course it’s probably not a good to do this to rare pens where their value might be decreased by messing with the surface. Another thing to consider is that some collectors think any cosmetic changes like this are unacceptable since the natural state of the pen is changed and it could be represented as being in better condition than in actuality. Overall, the process seems like it did not do any damage to the rubber substrate and had very positive visual and tactile result. Not bad if it fits your needs.