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ou8nrtist2 — Torc ,Celtic neckring
Published: 2007-08-28 07:33:00 +0000 UTC; Views: 9713; Favourites: 54; Downloads: 2318
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Description
This is forged stainless steel,made for my burly cousin to wear at Burning Man. I finished just in time and sent it out there with one of my house mates to deliver.I have stamped his personal symbols on both sides of the flat behind-the -neck section as well as at the ends of both button finials. I started with 1/2 X 1/2 inch solid square bar.
I have polished only the high parts and thus utilized the contrast left by the darkened areas from forging.
Update Sept 13th,2007
My cousin loved the piece and has requested I design and forge 2 matching wrist cuffs. Since he is in Massachusetts,I'll wait for him to CAST positives of his wrists and send them to me so that I'll be able (in California) to fabricate and fit the cuffs perfectly...
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Comments: 51
Thank you.
I'm making another similar one right now,though smaller in all dimensions,for a client in Israel.
I'll be posting it soon...
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nice, looking forward to seeing it
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That is so cool, I don't wear much jewelry besides wrist cuffs, but I would definitely wear that.
Just out of curiosity, how much would it cost to get one of those commissioned out of brass or some other yellow metal? and would you be willing to do it? I'm guessing it's probably out of my range. :/
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This one was $500.oo
But when you say yellow metal,brass or bronze...
These metals will color your skin green(verdigris)the minute you start to sweat,or will require constant maintenance to keep that from happening.
This is why I made the torc in stainless steel.
If it's the color (yellow)you feel comfortable with, you should go with gold,because it is non reactive with human chemistry(does not oxidize). But that would be WAY more than $500.oo if it was made the same size as this one.
I don't work in gold or I would volunteer...
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lol yeah way outa my range. I forgot about the whole green thing :/ in that case I would probably just go for steel, I do like that multicolored look of polishing just the higher surface.
Oh well maybe I can find a way to make my own. Thanks for the info though, you do alot of cool stuff with metal.
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Always say stainless or stainless steel.
Steel is another material altogether and readily rusts.
No one wants jewelry out of steel.
Blacksmiths will often say "mild steel" for regular steel.
This is so that no one mistakes them meaning stainless steel.
Stainless steel does have allot of iron in it to be sure ,but there's chromium and nickel in there too which is why it DOESN"T rust.
Don't mean to get all technical but these distinctions you'll need to know later on...
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Indeed, thanks for the correction and curing my ignorance I look forward to passing it on.
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This is amazing. Since I work in a soft medium, things like this just baffle my mind. Very nice work, and I admire your craftsmanship and attention to detail.
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Thank you Lisa,
I worked in silver when I was a teenager but found it wasn't tough enough to stand up to the punishment and abuse that I put my jewelry through. Soldered joints kept breaking,silver kept bending,rings deformed,bracelets squashed...So I got my old man to train me on stainless,welding forming etc. He thought I was nuts to make jewelry out of it,but my excuse was simply that I wanted it to last at least a lifetime...This he understood.
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The apple does not fall far from the tree,
In my genetics it is the playing with fire on a daily basis that seems to be the draw.
My great grandfather was a stoker on a train,his son sold ingots of pig iron at Schloss Ironworks in Birmingham Alabama(now defunct),and his son was a metal sculptor and welded nearly every day. His son,(me) has also followed the welding-as-modern-day-alchemy root,forging "base metals into gold".
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maybe i want something with my symbol 
i really like this one
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There you go,
Everybody should have personal symbols they resonate with.
It helps to identify what's critically important and then put quotation marks around it with an amulet, ring, or some other personal object...
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yeah i love my symbol but its very personal the only place i have it is draw in my sketch book lol
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Very nice! It definitely makes me wish I wasn't so terrible at forging.
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Ms.Twitcher,
your just a punk kid...LOL
When you're my age you'll be making masterpieces...
you gotta walk before you can run.
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Thank you Michael,
Love your carnelian bracelet...
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Thank you vinylram,
Hey I'm coming up to your neck of the woods...
the opening in Lake Oswego on Sept 9th for the cities rotation of public sculptures...
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Thank you Enrica,
For your kind words...
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I love it! I've always had a thing for torques
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Ah yes, the alternate spelling;
T o r q u e s
thank you ...
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I couldn't think of how to make "torc" plural - my brain is fried from school these days
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this is freaking awesome!! I love the twisting technique!
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Me too,
Thanks Alice.
Keep drawing girl,it's the best way we test our designs before making em.
and never throw away a sketch book,you'll be using it as a reference for years...
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Nice. 
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Most of my torcs are flexible enough to open FROM BEHIND THE NECK with both hands and slip on. This one is so burly that it barely budges,so great care was taken to make it already open just the right distance for its wearer to get on. However I was unable to fit it to him personally as he is out at Burning Man where I had the piece delivered. So I fit it to my own neck knowing something of the young mans stature and dimensions which are somewhat similar to my own, who will be sporting this talisman.
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I hope it fits!
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The Celts designed many clever ways of opening and closing torcs.
some are truly inspired,but virtually all there metals were softer than stainless steel...
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Ah, now, that's elegant and impressive. I hadn't seen the back-and-forth twisting effect before.
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Thanks Don,
The Celts were the first to do it (in bronze)as far as I'm aware of ,sometime in the first millennium before Christ.
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I've seen torcs before, but only ones with a continuous twist in the same rotation. And never in stainless steel.
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I've had an interest in Celtic artifacts for some years,and have amassed a pretty fair book collection on the subject,even springing for a very expensive out- -of-print encyclopedic volume with attendant book of plates from Jacobsthal ( a brilliant prof.)
Special treasure holes(called "hoards") have been found all over the British Isles. Apparently,they buried their personal jewelry if they were threatened with defeat or slavery by warring tribes or the Romans. These pits have all been found by accident (a farmer plowing a field for instance),and when found ,have usually been photographed before disturbing anything. This gives great insight and information about these artifacts. Also because GOLD DOES NOT TARNISH when put in the ground,we can see the piece EXACTLY as it was the day they buried it,and often divine it's method of construction... This is a highly specialized study with a whole hierarchy of minute but significant differences,in many different styles and genres. They were consummate artists and elevated their metal workers to the same status as the Druids and Warrior class. The ability to work metal with such skill was considered magical and consequently, often pieces were thought to be invested with supernatural powers...
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I've got a half-dozen books on the subject (nothing expensive, though), and I'm amazed every time I look at the photos.
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Those guys were magicians in a way,
Christ,with no welding and just straws to blow on a piece in a fire to increase it's heat to solder.
And soldering itself,how in the world did they accomplish that ?
And yet some of the artifacts from 500 years before Christ rival what we could do today...
The Megaws are 2 of the best authors I've found.
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Well, I went to see a famous South American gourd carver. His tools were old nails driven into sticks and sharpened on a rock. He did pyrography with a smoldering chip of wood, blowing on it gently. And a Chinese jewel carver, tromping on the pedal of a wooden lathe that turned an iron disk he was pouring abrasive slurry onto while turning the work in his other hand. A photo I saw of an Indonesian mask carver, holding the block of wood with his toes, sitting on a dirt floor. Clay pit iron smelting in Africa.... Some stuff you can only do with high-tech tools, but what can be done with simple tools in the right hands....
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Is like what you do...
The eye of the artist will overcome any lack of equipment and like cream always float to the surface...
Look what Andy Goldsworthy does with no tools at all. Course he's completely nuts too(in my humble opinion)LOL.
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I love what I've seen of Goldsworthy's art (some books and a movie). Not many people do sculptural things that are as temporary as dance and music, so there is a certain mythology around him; but it does look like the art is driving....
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Maybe I was unkind,
He's brilliant of course,only just very obsessive compulsive and not particularly present with his family for instance...
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I think I had an uncalled-for sharp tone there because Goldsworthy's problems (the compulsion and distance that I described, poorly, as "the art is driving") remind me too much of my own.
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Occupational hazard that,
Welcome to the club...LOL
Whatever your handicaps friend,your particular style/brand of art is a real inspiration to many of these kids...and I'm one.LOL
I have this very small symmetrical oblong ,jet black rock I picked up at some local beach and I've been playing with it for a couple of years wanting to feature it without destroying it's subtle beauty.It'll be a neck piece no doubt,but I'm at this point trying to figure a clean and elegant way to hold it with polished stainless steel. I think today I may have solved the riddle...Your very clean ways of displaying natural objects has definitely fired my imagination.
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I look forward to seeing that.
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