fanciful devices: Newsy

A Stone Is Nobody's

A man ambushed a stone. Caught it.
Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the rest of his life.

His mother asked why.

He said, because it's held captive, because it is captured.

Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know whether it's in a garden or not. Eternity and the stone
are mother and daughter; it is you who are getting old. The stone is only sleeping.

But I caught it, mother, it is mine by conquest, he said.

A stone is nobody's, not even its own. It is you who are conquered; you are minding the prisoner, which is yourself,
because you are afraid to go out, she said.

Yes yes, I am afraid, because you have never loved me, he said.

Which is true, because you have always been to me as the stone is to you, she said.

Russell Edson

FAQs

1. Are you a Southeast Asian dancing girl from the 1800s?

No, sorry to disappoint. My avatar and banner images are from an ancient book I found in the depths of my grandmother's cabinets. More on that here.

2. How do you make everything look so old?

First, you need a good oxidizer to brush on every bit of metal you can reach. I'll tell you all about it here.

Then there's this wax. I first mentioned it here. You'll have to scroll down a lot.

3. How can you be so productive?

I'm insanely obsessed and I have no offspring. I do nothing else- I don't have a day job, I don't clean my house or cook, I spend all day in pjs, often completely abandoning personal hygiene... I only interact with other humans when I walk my dog. And I like people! But I prefer dogs.

And I'm sloppy- but I make that sloppiness work for me.

4. Any tips you'd like to share?

No! Except for these 16 posts about techniques and this one about how to find your aesthetic.

5. Would you be offended if I took some inspiration from your designs?

Well, I'd be happier if you outright copied them.

No really, imitation is how we learn. I have enough ideas to go around. And even if I don't- please. No one's going to do this obsessively enough to threaten my business. (Probably.) I learned by copying others and I've seen others copy me as a step toward developing their own voice. So feel free. (I'd love if you tossed me a link in my comments, so I can feel like a proud momma.)

6. What do you look like?

Why, what have you heard? Really? Wow.

6/1/10

Newsy

As y'all know (both of you), I'm too impatient to post nice pictures after a fruitful day. First comes crappy scanner, then pictures. It's an exercise in how extremely worse then better the same item can look depending on the media through which it's relayed.

This necklace for example has a gorgeous etching of an art nouveau lady in the style of Mucha on this silver inner face part that I have revealed. Here you can barely see it. It also features pewter-glazed ceramic beads adn a bunch of other beads. Which may be that icky, I think I forgot to wipe of my grunging gook off of them. The reverse shows big chunky gears. I'm over watch gears, but I made an exception.

Here's a tiny choker.

I really liked this tiny silver bottle and wanted it to be showcased on its own.

Here's what became of the quartz nuggets in the shell casings. Wooden rounds, inexpensive but really satisfying, visually. Also a big hoop made from fish bone.

What else? Here's another of my dirty whites:

With a lot of natural materials such as wood, horn, ceramic, glass and procelain. The stick is a bit of antique clay pipe which I've soldered on either end to finish it in a more polished way. The hook is bone. The round white beads are actually some kind of nut. Should look that up. The stripes are grunge in their carved furrows. Might clean more of it out.

Bracelet in periwinkle. Includes a tag from a Uruguayan soccer team, but the buyer needn't know that.

This one isn't showing well. It's a crazy cool seild-shaped medal from, I think, when the pope came to uruguay. It has an awesome old ribbon and its connected to a rosary link. Black diamond rhinestones, this 'n' that. On the reverse side of both bits there's images of old pope-types. Cool images, but not so cute around one's neck.

La piece de I-cannot-resistance! OK, when I drape it nicely it'll be nicer. A dance card brass notebook with antique rosary strand, heishi of gradiated hessonite. Soldered links with freshwater pearl drops...just pretty all around. The pencil that was in the notebook isn't the one shown, although the partially-used, yellowed pad within is the original. The original pencil was nothing too interesting so I begged this much loved, knife-sharpened stub off a student. He actually gave it to me, like, a year after I first begged for it. I'm dedicated to my craft.

This one looks particularly less attractive than it will tomorrow. Man, why can't I just wait? What's wrong with me?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hello, I love the bracelet with the eye and the pope medal necklace. Beautiful! And the stuff at the top of the page today... Hmmm... I'm flattered!; 6/1/10, 7:22 AM
fanciful devices said...: I love you! You rock fancylinda!; 6/3/10, 3:07 AM