An introduction
Gilding metal
Gilding metal is an alloy of copper and zinc, really only used in specialist metalsmithing, and it is a very practical, no-nonsense metal that has its feet firmly in the world, and its eyes on the job in hand. You know what you’re getting with gilding metal, and it’s a material that you can rely on. It is not particularly interested in being the public eye (it tarnishes quickly so must be patinated) and this is typical of gilding metal’s character which, being solid and reliable, needs no fanfare. Gilding metal has its job to do, and it does it thoroughly with both compassion and precision. It knows its own mind, but will also work with you, as long as you both agree the direction and get on with it in an efficient and effective manner. Gilding metal doesn’t take kindly to carelessness, but unlike nickel, it will forgive it as long as you learn the lesson first. I do not wish to give the impression that gilding metal has no softer side: it’s just that gilding metal, like an old-fashioned matron, sees the softer side as being served by getting the job done, getting it done well, and getting it done now.
Nickel
There is no way round nickel being a difficult metal, and that is why I like it: it knows its own mind and doesn’t like sharing what that mind is. It is difficult to move, unpredictable, stubborn and contrary. Everything about it is awkward - you can’t even buy sheet nickel in dimensions wider than 30cm. As a material, it holds itself back until you give it exactly what it requires in exactly the way it wants it. One moment’s lack of concentration with nickel, one I wonder what happens if out of line and you don’t so much go one step forwards and two steps back, as one step forwards and five back. A simple slip-up when you’re working in nickel can set you back hours, with remedial action just setting up the potential for more missteps. You have to bring you're a-game to nickel: there’s no room for sloppiness, lack of concentration, shortcuts, or winging it. You have to be completely present, thinking about every single thing you’re doing, thinking three steps ahead. Making is a consensual act, but with nickel the first thing you have to do is persuade it to come to the table. Show up, and nickel will show up; be unfocused and nothing will work. Nickel is a hard teacher - uncompromising doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Nickel takes a physical toll on your body: moving it requires regular breaks and I would never work on several nickel pieces at the same time, instead interspersing them with pieces made from less physically demanding materials. It is the most challenging material I work with. But still I persist, because the surface of nickel is breath-taking, resting somewhere between silver and steel. Warmer than silver and richer than steel, it is almost other-worldly. It is one of the few base metals whose surface, unpatinated, remains stable. Much of what makes nickel difficult to work with is that it stands there, unchangingly itself, but as a surface, this is its strength. To look at, nickel is an ambiguous metal - almost mercurial. Few people use it, but it is in that unknown-ness that its magic lies.
Aluminium
Aluminium. Last and to me, least-fathomable. Aluminium is an other-worldly metal; a metal that is to my mind, stepped out of time. I have found it a difficult metal with which to build a relationship. From the little work I have done with aluminium, I have to be honest and say that all I have found at the centre of it something so distant, so far away, as to feel as though it is mainly dead. There seems to me to an absence in the place where I would expect personality and character to sit. Or perhaps I have not waited long enough, because the self of aluminium lies so distant, that I am still waiting for the echo of its reply.
Pewter
Pewter is interested in relationship; it is a metal that finds its place in the world through its service to others. Typically used for tableware - objects designed to facilitate convivial intermingling - pewter is a metal that wants to do what you like. Where brass enjoys partnership and the excitement of stepping out into a new world together, pewter is more devoted: wanting to serve and literally to bend itself to your will. It is by far the softest of the metals with which I work, and to play with it - dolphin-like, moving fast, weaving in-and-out - is to work with pewter at its best. To look at, pewter is quite a shy metal that likes to hide behind the skirts of its companions, sheltering behind its similarities with other metals. Logistical considerations making working with pewter challenging in a shared workshop, and this lack of opportunity is something that I regret.
I began working with metal when I was thirty-two. Up to this point, I had gone through various rounds of education, had trained as a classical singer and spent a number of years working in healthcare management. Learning to make introduced me to very different experiences, and there was much that I didn’t foresee, perhaps chief of which were the personalities that I would meet, the intimacy of the connection I would build with them, and the way in which they would alter my view of how the world fits together. These personalities are not the many creative people that work in and around the world of making, but are instead the materials that I work with: brass, silver, copper, steel, pewter, aluminium, nickel and the rest. As my skills developed, I came to know these materials not just as friends, but as co-creators - co-conspirators in a way - in the processes of making. The relationships that I formed with these materials prompted questions about our relationship to material in general which, in turn, gave rise to wider questions about how we relate to the beautiful, joyous, complex, rich, tapestried, problematic and ever-changing world that surrounds us. These enquiries so changed my ways of being and ways of seeing that I’d like to take a moment to introduce you.
Silver
Ah, silver. Left till the end but not quite last.
With silver, you are on the edge of time, stepping over into the unknown with a metal that is as much ethereal, ephemeral and whispering as it is the cold and hard. Silver sings: a song of the place where infinity touches the earth; where the purity of that thing that in storytelling is known as ‘the soul’, lands into material. It knows much, and tells much to those that will listen. It is precious; it is beautiful; and it whispers of the rustle of white feathers: of the long silent glide over the surface of the moon. It speaks of travelling far and returning home. It is a kind metal, at once fathomless and knowable, present and unknowable. It is the both-in-one, woven together to show us something - a tiny glimpse - of what that dance may be.
Brass
I have a soft spot for brass, and there is a softness in brass in every sense: how it moves, how it feels when you work it, how it is to finish, and how it presents. It’s not sloppiness, laziness, casualness, or inattention, it’s more a compliance: a metal that is so at home in itself that very little ruffles its feathers. Brass is a very friendly material to work. It not standoffish not remote, but personable in every aspect, full of joy, and full of enthusiasm: it is a metal that likes to giggle. Brass is a metal that likes to dance, unself-consciously, completely absorbed by its movement with the music that it hears. There’s a quiet, almost inner radiance to brass – an unstudied, natural beauty, that is self-contained - and this combination of gentle exuberance and uncontrived stillness is compelling. For me, it is this radiance, this sense of easy, inner warmth and generosity of nature, that makes brass so quietly powerful.
Copper
Copper is seen as warm metal, both from its colour and its association with domestic objects - bed warmers, copper pans, kitchen implements, even kitchens themselves. It’s likely the first metal you work with a student but there are two sides to copper. On the one hand, copper is a sloppy metal; dirty in a clingy way that gets in your hair, your eyes and your nose. Finishing copper makes me sneeze, and it turns everything blue. Then there’s the softness: copper that has been heated has a habit of moving where and when you don’t want it to, which is unbelievable frustrating. Working with soft copper is like walking on eggshells.
For years, I avoided copper for these reasons, but then I discovered its use at scale and at thickness and the metal transformed for me. At scale, softness becomes an advantage, and increasing the thickness makes it more stable. I also came to be fond of its red colour, not in its uncoloured state - but when it is coloured a deep, variegated orange or a rich, sparking, red-gold that hints at fire and stone. This leads us to the other side of copper, which speaks to something of the mother, first as the metal that births many alloys (brass, gilding metal, sterling silver all contain copper) and second that when it is used at scale, it is a metal that cares. And perhaps this brings us to the nub of copper: that it is used to best advantage when it is used to expand worlds. Ask it to do something little, to do something insignificant, and you get a petulant response, but put your ambitions high, and you get a metal that will nourish and care.
The characters of metal are like people - just because you didn’t like one when you first met them, doesn’t mean that in time, you may not come to enjoy some of their company, or appreciate some of what they do in the world. This is the stage at which copper and I sit: not the firmest of friends, and still with reservations about each other, but prepared to work together when the situation calls for it.
Steel
Steel is a powerful metal. Powerful, of course, in the sense of its strength and its industrial applications, but - more interestingly for me - powerful in itself. Steel has a strong, deep inner sense of self and it is a metal that sits on a boundary: of this world but with the capacity to conjure others. Steel holds certain values: those of sovereignty, power-with, and transmutation, demanding these values in you if you are to work with it. You must be powerful to work steel, not in terms of physical strength, but in the sense of character and strength of intention, integrity and self. You have to show up for steel but if you do, it will meet you. And meeting with steel is a fine thing to do because it is a mark that the metal takes you seriously. Steel is transmutable - able to be many things to many people, speaking many tongues, but it also crosses thresholds, tells something of magic and the whispers of the possibility of other realms.