Going to a flea market and ending up at a circus

Today I got up ridiculously early and set out for a large flea market on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border. Mainly I went to buy ephemera - I'm not sure what's going to come of it but I've been collecting old photographs, pamphlets, and illustrations for a couple of weeks. I also thought I might find some useful tools. What I ended up with was a stack of old photos, two books, a wonderfully weird "silver-tone" belt from probably the 60s (I like the way the links interlock), and three different types of African trade beads. I don't normally use African trade beads in my jewelry, but these caught my eye because they look like stacks of miniature 45s. I exchanged cards with the seller, a gentleman who was very excited to hear that I made jewelry using Adinkra symbols.

I hadn't been to the flea market in ages and the whole experience was bizarrely nostalgic. Partly it was the weather - chilly and misty, it was more like late September than mid-August. And September means the start of school and, more importantly, the end of summer, which is a moment of multi-layered nostalgia. All those childhood summers when you could see the beginning of school bearing down on you like a red plaid steamroller kicking up a flurry of orange and gold leaves. Being part of academia, I've never really escaped the feeling that the year starts in September. What really made it nostalgic though, was the poster for the Clyde Beatty Circus prominently displayed at one of the booths. (This isn't the exact poster I saw, but it was similar to this one.)

My father was a drummer in the circus. He had gone to Julliard but dropped out to become the drummer in the Ringling Bros. Circus when it was still under canvas, when it was still a real circus. Later, when Ringling stopped traveling, he moved to the Clyde Beatty circus. Clyde Beatty was a lion tamer who was killed by his favorite lion. I used to have two claws from an earlier favorite lion who went rogue and had to be put down. I kept them in cotton in a white box like the ones you get from a jewelry store. They looked like dirty pointed yellow toenails.


My father's nickname, Boom-Boom, was given to him by a non-English-speaking circus hand who accompanied it with the appropriate drum-beating gesture. I think it stuck because it suited him: he had a booming voice and a personality to go with it. His belly was round and solid, he smoked big cigars, and wore his hair in a short flat-top, tight on the sides. He imagined he was Jackie Gleason: "One-a these days, Alice..BOOM!" He imagined he was Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich and Johnny Carson. He imagined he was famous and, I suppose, in the circus world, he was famous, a little.

After some years the band leader who hired my father retired and Boom-Boom became the band leader as well the drummer. This meant that he was responsible for arranging all the music that played during the performances, hiring all the musicians, and working with the acts to coordinate their musical cues and highlights: Drumroll! as gymnast #1 clambers to the top of the human pyramid. Rimshot! as he lands on the see-saw that flips gymnast #2 into a somersault. Fanfare! as gymnast #2 flies to the top of the same human pyramid and lands on a pair of shoulders.

For me one summer, it meant that I could help him with his work. He carried the music for all the musicians in a big wooden chest. That summer I helped him organize the music by writing the names of the songs and the parts (bass, organ, trumpet) on manila envelopes. That summer he also built short wooden screens that sat in front of the first row of musicians, hiding their music stands. They were about three feet tall and he painted them with musical notes in bright colors. I helped him glue glitter onto the notes. As the band leader, he wore brightly colored jackets and shirts with ruffles down the front. It was generally agreed that he was the best in the business.

Out of the kiln, into the pickle pot

I've now enameled just about everything in sight. I even enameled a piece made from sterling silver wire, which meant going through the rigmarole of bringing the fine silver to the surface by heating, quenching, pickling, repeat 6 more times. Not a problem - just did it in between switching various things in and out of the kiln. You could practically hear the swish as I moved from the soldering station to the kiln. Heat, quench, dump in pickle, swish, open kiln and remove red hot items, put in waiting items, close kiln, swish, heat, quench, dump in pickle, swish....get the picture? (Yes, we see...) Can you tell how much I love being able to say that I have a soldering station and kiln? Yes, they're both temporarily set up in my kitchen and I have to break them down after each use, but working with hot metal is a complete thrill.

All but one of the adinkra pieces I made are now covered in enamel. The green circles in the upper left is the one made of sterling silver. The only one that isn't covered with enamel is now hanging in front of an enamel copper oval. I like the idea of an enamel piece showing through the silver wire, but I'm not sure if this is the right piece. (I worry that it makes the adinkra look a little like a cockroach.) There's a second shot that shows the copper pendant better. It was made using a very cool enameling pen that writes with what looks like black paint. For this pendant I doodled on the bare copper, then covered the whole thing with flux, which is basically transparent uncolored enamel. It keeps the copper from getting covered with firescale and turning dark brown, so you get the nice rosy glow of heated copper. The other neat thing is that the powdered enamel doesn't seem to like the black pen enamel, so you get this interesting resist effect which I think you can see if you click on the second picture. I think this technique would look great with transparent colored enamel too, but sadly my starter kit of enamels from Rio Grande didn't come with any. It also didn't come with any yellow and there are TWO different shades of brown. Who wants brown enamel? (By the way, to see stuff on the Rio Grande website you have to be a member and log in. If you make and sell jewelry it's easy to become a member - call them, give them a website or real world location where your jewelry is sold, and you're in. For those of you who don't sell jewelry or don't want to become members, sorry. I'll try to keep the Rio Grande links to a minimum.)

Soldering is proceeding apace and yesterday I made two pieces that are definitely acceptable. I've even made them into necklaces. Not sure I'm going to sell them yet, but they're not bad. This one is a piece I made intending to replace the tendril components I ordered from somewhere -- I can't recall and can't find the components at any of my usual on-line jewelry supply haunts. You can see those components in a necklace here. Granted, my swirly thing isn't as delicate as the store-bought components and my soldering is a little visible while the store-bought soldering is invisible - but I'm quite happy with the swirly thing.

The other piece is based on a sketch of a spider web I saw a couple of months ago. It wasn't anything like your usual spider web, as you can see - of course, the real thing was much more detailed, but this is what looked best once I started piecing it together. I oxidized it and went for a Lair of the Black Widow look. I'm much less happy with the soldering in this one and the wire bending is awkward, but I think it captures the odd swoopy shape of the original pretty well. This one I'm not going to sell - I have a friend whose birthday is coming up who could, as they say, rock this necklace. Wonder who it could be?

Soldering peaches

In the past week I've made great strides in my soldering skills. You won't think so when you see the pictures, but trust me, the fact that I could get two pieces of silver to stick together at all constitutes a great stride. A few days ago I set aside several hours and a pile of wire to practice soldering. I discovered several things:

• Sheet solder works for me, paste doesn't.
• I was using flux all wrong.
• A third hand (not an actual one, one of those contraptions) is extremely useful, maybe even crucial.
• My hands shake.

That last thing is why the third hand is so crucial for me. It's also making me extremely nervous, as in "I'm extremely worried that I have a degenerative disease of the nervous system." I don't, but what's life without a little hypochondria?

So, here's the first "piece" - and I use that term very loosely - I made during my soldering practice session. The pieces of wire were left over from a setting I tried to make for a drusy. I chopped them up and laid them out until they took on this basket shape. Then I soldered them together and added a hook. (It helps me feel less pointless to believe that I'm actually making something.) I doubt I'll ever do anything with this, besides gaze on it proudly from time to time.

The next thing I did was to attempt to make two different adinkra motifs out of soldered wire. I chose me ware wo "I will marry you" (which is the symbol to the right) and odo nnyew fie kwan "love never loses its way home" because a friend wants me to make her a necklace using those two symbols and a couple of others. I've made a couple of adinkra symbols out of pmc, but these two seem more suited to wire work. It took hours, but I managed to produce what I'm thinking of as first drafts of the symbols. (I don't have a picture of odo yet, but I'll post one later.)

You can click on the picture at left to see a larger size of the me ware wo pendant, which will allow you to admire my mad soldering skills. Actually, what you'll see is that this one is blobbier than the first practice piece. The reason is that there are so many joins so close together. Still, it hasn't fallen apart yet, so I'm pretty happy.

To cap off a very satisfactory afternoon of soldering, I took a scrap of square 16 gauge silver wire and created....a tiny peach! And, yes, there is actual soldering involved here - the stem is attached to the body with the teensiest bit of nearly invisible solder. I was, as the Brits say, chuffed. So it was with renewed confidence that, a couple of days later, I picked up my torch and tried to make a soldered ring. Forty minutes later had a solder-covered mass of crooked wire - not the design goal I had in mind - so clearly more soldering practice is in order. Still, the very fact that I can think of myself as someone learning to solder, as opposed to someone who can't solder is nice. And I can always look at my soldered peach if I start to think that I can't actually do this %&#!&@! thing.