WAXING GREEN...

As today’s storming weather begins to break I make a too rare report

from the deep interiors of mostly green waxes…

This Acanthus, beginning to unfurl a new flower stalk in the garden last week, suggests a striking similarity to the wax work I might do in my dreams… or… Perhaps in heaven…

Wax, my favorite medium, comes in all the colors of the rainbow I just photographed. There are thousands of formulae which have various properties of hardness, flexibility, toughness, even a sense of “memory”. My favorite wax is hard, crisp to carve, a lovely green, as you’ve seen. My second choice, particularly for sculptural work is one called “Peck’s Purple”, which has a gorgeous color as well… they can marry well. Here is a third shade… a wax injection of the bell I have long called the FROG NAMED FABERGE… Production waxes seem to become vibrantly personal choices.

I find many of them rather awful!


I am recarving this design for a number of reasons, even though it has been a popular design in the line. I like it well enough, I’m pleased with the way this guy hopped into my life after meeting him as a jade carving on a Faberge parasol handle. He’s been throwing kisses on top of this bell since 1997. I consider him mostly a table bell, but I know he is often worn.

He also throws a number of production problems into the mix. There are basic problems in the flow of the masses through his insouciant pose to the rather large bell form. These separate parts are easily seen as the two colors. They state something I usually try to avoid: designing a a bell shape with a separate handle… I prefer to think of these jewels as their own totality of form & idea.

The Fab Frog is his own person & one supposes he really is that prince… He sits happily atop his bell, thank you very much. But we have agreed to some modifications…

I am reworking it as a slightly smaller version, making him more comfortable as jewelry. I am rethinking the design as sculpture which must also function… as a sprue, or a channel for molten metal during casting. He becomes more compact, while retaining that saucy gesture… in fact, I believe I am actually improving on his aim!



I’ve spent several more sessions on the wax as I learned how to evolve the design so that there are fewer openings, “collapsing” the form while recapturing certain delicacies with perhaps finer attention. I am learning unexpected things as I revisit this design after so many years. We both are growing in this second, more mature, but still deliciously waxy encounter. I’ll let you judge soon for yourself…


In closing I share another shot of the previous affaire…

I decided to use him as the promotional image for the next Open Studio Tour brochure, seen with the silver version which has been in production for several years.

I’m outing my passions with wax by sharing so much of the work at this early stage, in the raw material, seemingly so much less romantic than shiny metal.. Or is it?

This also seems to be a season when designs are moving backward & forward in time: older studies stepping up into new maturity; new maturity taking on older already established designs.

Teach/learning & Learn/teaching…

Time moves in both directions as I tie up this post with an additional nod atop the previous one’s notion.

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