Designing to Poetry - Whirlwinds of Fire

Some of you may visit my favourite bloggers site - the doggerelsbollocks and cs kindly asked his visitors to help me out finding some suitable verse to design to. In some cases it can be nice turns of phrase suggestive of movement, colour, mood, place.

The result was a wealth of potential poetry to design to. I have made a start. You can see a few pieces by following the link of the title of this post to some I have already put on my own site.

The piece I would like to share with you here is inspired by a phrase in a Rimbaud poem 'whirlwinds of fire'. I only have a line to go on (the site that has it is in Italy so I haven't been able to get a definitive translated title for this particular poem - and I will not be offended if this omission is highlighted and the gap filled). I note that Rimaud used 'whirlwind' quite a lot in his poetry.

'traversed his soul like
Whirlwinds of fire'

Unlike the other pieces I've made so far, this one has turned out rather eccentric. I know, I know with my designs that is more a matter of degree than of kind!

The piece started with the red red artisan made glass bead (artist Funky Cow) and some square profile copper wire I had in stock. From that point on I was thinking in spirals and reacting to what materials I had to hand.

So that's why I bought that!


I had one of those satisfymoments of 'so that's why I bought those' when I spoted the filigree shapes in my copper bin.


Building up from the focal piece

From that point on I was into construction mode - how to make a necklace with what I had having chosen the theme of spirals. It helped of course to have trial sections of box chainmaille already constructed and in my stash!

The few wire components are handformed from copper wire. The wrapped loop links have a carnelian gembead flanked by two lovely copper spacer beads. The length of box chainmaille and then a few more wrapped loop links to the toggle clasp.

Images:
Top - This is where the design starts and ends - an artisan made lampwork bead on a spiral bail.

Second - A collage of detail shots showing the toggle, the focal piece and filligree, the box chainmaille and some wirework links

Third - A shot of the whole necklace on the flat. Not easy to do with this one. My practice is to show the detail of a necklace and try to arrange it artfully, however this one was just too detailed to do that well. It is, therefore, a bit like a corpse on a slab in this pic!

Fourth - The necklace as it hangs on a bust.

And there you have it - a bold statement piece and not for the faint hearted or shy retiring type! I've quite enjoyed designing this piece and I most certainly will list it in my 'Ephemeral - poetic licence' cart.

I do have a yen to try to design to a phrase that obooki mentioned "Joyce has a phrase in Dubliners I’ve always liked: “brown impeturbable faces” - of a row of houses, that is." I will, of course, share the results.

Until then . . .