This first project illustrates the evolution of a custom, hand-carved pendant or charm. In this case, a client that likes the work he sees on my website approached me with the idea of re-creating the bracelet that Angelina Jolie fondled while dining with Johnny Depp in the movie “The Tourist”. Apparently the client’s wife had fallen in love with either the movie or the symbolism of the charm, which featured the Greek God, Janus; God of beginnings and portals. Heck, why not? I’m not one to “rip off” a design idea but I like the symbolism of the Janus charm myself, and I’m pretty sure that whatever patent the Greeks may have had on the image of their God has expired long ago. And since I was interested in reproducing the project, discussions with the client led me to reduce my normal custom fee to him and go through a couple of extra steps so that I can continue to produce this or some minor variation of it in silver or gold. Red Box provided the movie and I was off and running. First thing was to slab some carving wax and rough out the image… Then add some detail… From this finished carving I made a mold from which I could work to add the remaining detail of the charm as pictured in the movie. The charm in the movie had beading around the edge and a red gem on the back side. Here’s the finished wax model with beading… The rough casting… And the finished pendant… In this case we selected a peridot for the back because it was the client’s wife’s birthstone. This product has become available for purchase on this website, here! This next project came from London…through the client’s vacation in Italy! It’s fun working with people from all over the world. This is a color suite of corundum (sapphire and ruby) with a diamond. This project is also executed in 18K yellow gold.
3 Comments
Meat loaf may not have much to do with handmade custom jewelry but (despite what you may be thinking) it can have everything to do with excellence…and there’s the connection. I have this friend; call her a close friend. Actually, the same friend of the previously mentioned food fight. She grew up vegetarian but at some point in her life decided that she was going to eat meat. One could almost say that now she’s an animal protein advocate, especially if bacon is involved. Not that animal protein is the only kind of protein that she eats, I’ve had some very excellent Tempeh dishes that she’s prepared and we’ve shared many meals of many types and enjoyed them all…from vegan to vegetarian to downright meaty. I’m not sure how our conversation got onto meat loaf but if memory serves we were eating a meal at my house of skirt steak with Chimichurri, roasted herbed potatoes and grilled peppers with steamed brocolli. The geopolitical origin of most of that meal is Argentina, a place that I’ve been scheming to visit for a long time and it’s one of my staple meals. We were discussing food as we often do, along with our passion for food and maybe life in general. I think wine may have been involved though it was likely an Oregon local. We have pretty good wines here in Oregon, especially if you like the Vitis vinifera grape but that’s another story. Her 8 yr. old son was participating in the discussion and when meat loaf came up, he seemed interested as an adventurous sort that hadn’t yet experienced meat loaf of any type. She however, turned up her nose a bit. My own kids smiled in a knowing silence when I promised the boy I would soon make him meat loaf and make a believer out of his mom as well. I had a secret. And I wasn’t going to give the details of the recipe I use but when I did a search for Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Cajun Meatloaf from his cookbook “Louisiana Kitchen”, I found over 9,160 references, many of which already share the recipe. So I guess I’m ok sharing it here. My recommendation however is buy the book. This isn’t the only truly great recipe within the pages of my battered and stained copy. Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Cajun Meatloaf Seasoning Mix: 2 medium bay leaves 1 Tablespoon salt 1 teaspoon cayenne 1 teaspoon black pepper ½ teaspoon white pepper ½ teaspoon ground cumin ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg Ingredients: 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter ¾ cup finely chopped onion ½ cup finely chopped celery ½ cup finely chopped bell pepper ¼ cup finely chopped green onions 2 teaspoons minced garlic 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce ½ cup evaporated milk ½ cup ketchup 1½ pounds. ground beef ½ pound Ground pork 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 cups very fine dry bread crumbs Preheat the oven to 350º. Combine the seasoning mix in a bowl and set aside. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the celery, onion, bell pepper, green onions, garlic, Worcestershire sauce and seasoning mix. Sauté until mixture starts sticking extensively, about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally and scraping the bottom of the saucepan frequently. Stir in the milk and ketchup. Continue cooking for about 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and allow mixture to return to room temperature. Place the ground beef and pork in an ungreased 13×9-inch baking pan. Add the eggs, the cooked veggie mixture (removing the bay leaves) and the bread crumbs. Mix by hand until thoroughly combined. In the center of the pan, shape the mixture into a loaf that is about 1½” high, 6″ wide and 12″ long. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, then raise the heat to 400 degrees and continue cooking until done, about 35 minutes longer. Now, there’s no reason why you can’t serve the meatloaf just as it is here, but Chef Prudhomme recommends, and I second it, that a good accompaniment for this dish is his “Very Hot Cajun Sauce for Beef” from the same cookbook. I took the time to prepare this also. Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Very Hot Cajun Sauce for Beef This sauce is excellent with Cajun Meat Loaf (above). 3/4 cup chopped onions 1-1/2 cup chopped green bell peppers 1/4 cup chopped celery 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour 3/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (preferably cayenne) 1/2 teaspoon white pepper 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 2 bay leaves 1/4 cup minced jalapeno peppers (see Note) 1 teaspoon minced garlic 3 cups beef stock Note: Fresh jalapenos are preferred; if you have to use pickled ones, rinse as much vinegar from them as possible. Combine the onions, bell peppers and celery in a small bowl and set aside while you start the roux. (Note: Unlike the roux in most other recipes, the roux we use here is light brown. Therefore, instead of heating the oil to the smoking stage, we heat it to only 250ƒ – this prevents the roux from getting too brown.) In a heavy 2-quart saucepan heat the oil over medium-low heat to about 250ƒ With a metal whisk, whisk in the flour a little at a time until smooth. Continue cooking, whisking constantly; until roux is light brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. Be careful not to let the roux scorch or splash on your skin. Remove from heat and with a spoon immediately stir in the vegetable mixture and the red, white and black peppers; return pan to high heat and cook about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the bay leaves, jalapeno peppers and garlic, stirring well. Continue cooking about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. (We’re cooking the seasonings and vegetables in the light roux and the mixture should, therefore, be pasty.) Remove from heat. In a separate 2-quart saucepan, bring the stock to a boil. Add the mix mixture by spoonfuls to the boiling stock, stirring until dissolved between each addition. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cook until the sauce reduces to 3-1/2 cups, about 15 minutes. Skim any oil from the top and serve immediately. As it turned out, and despite many cool and rainy weekends here in Oregon early this summer the day we planned for this was sunny and hot. Not a bad thing for Cajun food, necessarily, but I wasn’t particularly anxious to fire up my Wolf on that hot day. So playing the innovator and really preferring almost any food with a smoky flavor I did this in my Kettle grill.
Here’s a fun story and a neat, currently in-progress project. The story, which you will see turns out well, starts with a divorce. Not acrimonious, the parties involved have agreed to co-parent in the best interests of their child, now 8 years old. The mother often brings her child to Oregon to visit her parents and was visiting in Southern Oregon during this recent 4th of July holiday. Having previously made contact with me through my recently launched website, garydawsondesigns.com, we made arrangements to meet to discuss what to do with her old engagement ring. She had the idea that she wanted to recycle the materials of the ring into something for her child, probably a pendant. Something that would represent both parents and yet be mostly about the boy. Beyond that, and the fact that she would prefer to also utilize an emerald, the childs birthstone, she didn’t really have a solid direction for the design…so we talked. I love how the design process evolves! In talking about her son’s birthday, she mentioned that there had been a storm with lightning on the day that he was born. And interestingly, on each birthday since…lightning had also appeared. It wasn’t a stretch to suggest that lightning might play a part in the design of his pendant. She also mentioned the bicycle race that her son always had with his grandpa. Always a close race, always contested, the “Pedal Cup” was much anticipated by both Grandpa and Grandkid! There was even a trophy. A rolled out penny with the words “Pedal Cup” stamped into the surface. After some thought, and further consultation with her via digital imaging and email since she was now again out of state we arrived at a working concept…here it is. I removed the diamonds and melted the platinum ring into an ingot. After rolling the platinum ingot into a sturdy piece of sheet, I cut out two lightning bolts and visualized that those, representing both parents, would point toward the emerald that she had chosen for the pendant. The lightening, of course, also represented the child’s birthday history. I will set the emerald into a pure gold (24K) bezel to represent the purity of intent of both parents to work together in the best interests of the child. Then, remembering the rolled-out penny shape, I visualized applying all of these materials onto an 18Karat background in the same shape. The center stone of the engagement ring will be graver set in a star-cut, near the top of the pendant to represent the “rising star” that is this child. Accent stones will be graver set into the sides of the pendant to add a deco-ish, super-hero feel to the entire pendant. There are other subtle elements of meaning build into this pendant. In creating custom jewelry, we can not only recycle materials to our advantage, but built in layers of meaning. For me this is fulfilling and joyful! Sunday, I wake up late…9:30 is very late for me. I have a headache despite having not abused myself with the consumption of alcohol the night before. Too much sleep? I activate my phone to find a text from the night before. I should have left my phone on; having received that text when it was sent would have made my day. And by the time my kids get up just a little later, I have received 4 new text messages wishing me a happy Father’s day from various friends. My kids don’t mention Father’s Day as they begin to stir. Our family dynamics are probably not normal, whatever normal may be. My plans to revise a ring design early in the day get derailed when my friend calls me with a request for help. The crew who installed the mast on his sailboat had jimmied the windex, the small wind vane that sits atop the mast of most sailboats indicating wind direction. Since he and I climb (rocks) together, he asked me to come out and help by belaying him as he scales the mast to make the repair. It doesn’t take me long to turn off my steam cleaner and ultrasonic; a motorcycle ride to one of our local lakes seems like a more fitting Father’s day Sunday. As I prepare to leave, my 20 yr. old son coyly asks me about my current beer preferences. Did I mention that our family dynamics may be out of the mainstream? So the plan was to use the mainsail halyard to get a climbing rope up and over the halyard pulley atop the mast. Connecting the two ropes with duct tape and hauling the climbing rope seemed like a good idea until the duct tape separated as the join tried to go through the pulley, leaving both the halyard and the climbing rope in a pile on the deck. This made what was a minor inconvenience into a major catastrophe. Using the jib halyard and winch, we finally got Pat up the mast where he stayed for almost a half hour trying to thread the mainsail halyard back through the pulley. He sure made a fuss when I jumped off the boat making the mast sway fairly violently side to side. I obviously wasn’t thinking about that effect. And bummer, no luck with the halyard. This situation will now require pulling the boat out of the water and taking the mast down to effect the repair. If it’s not one thing…it’s another. (I think of Gilda Radner and her SNL character Rosanna Rosanna Dana a lot.) Always somethin’! I remain sorry that we didn’t get Pat’s boat up an sailing that day but the several hours I spent in the sun, the good company of my friends Pat and Marsha and the new guy Tim who wandered over from his nearby boat to help us out, and the motorcycle ride out to the lake and back were pretty fantastic. Soon after my arrival back home, my headache is gone and my kids are acting pretty weird as they shoo me out of our expansive kitchen. I grab a shower and spend a short time reviewing my newly launched web site. Garydawsondesigns.com is now in the review, upgrade and marketing stage of its development. I note that we have climbed the first few rungs of the search engine ladder. I know Mike and I will be working together on SEO (search engine optimization) tomorrow. My kids call me up to a surprise dinner of rib eyes grilled to perfection, roasted, herbed potatoes, and salad. My daughter, Chanda gets upset when I take a biscuit, telling me that those are definitely NOT for dinner. Eric and I put the ones we took back on the cooling rack and we wash down our steaks, potatoes and lovely salad with Worker’s Pale Ale from the Walkabout Brewing Company of Central Point, OR and a Red Hook Eisbock 28. The sender of the previous night’s text message is on the way back from spending the weekend with her own father so we wait dessert until her arrival to use Chandi’s biscuits in fabricating fresh strawberry shortcake…excellent! One food fight and another shower later, we all collapse into a dreamless, restful sleep. Busy day tomorrow will involve getting back to the custom ring design revision for a client in Seattle, moving my photo setup to another room to expand my workshop bench space, and much more SEO work.
Did I mention that our family dynamics are somewhat odd? |
Author
|