✹ West Dean Rescidency
9th July 2021
Last day in West Dean, we had got to use metal workshop with Grant, the metal technician. We simply started by learning about the material. I really like the way Grant described the characters of metal that it’s a really aggressive material. In order to manipulate it properly, we need to heat it up and then weaken it by quickly putting it in water - this method called ‘Annealing’
There are brass sheet, coper and gilding metal. Each metal has different strengths, but every one of them need the same process. We, then, try surface decorative with stamping technique, punching and polishing on the strip metal that will be assembled together with rivet to make this fan-like mechanism. In this workshop I like that we got to try everything I were interested in, it gave me more confidence as I aimed to make my fan from metal sheet but not really sure how to work with metal. The metal workshop in our campus is mainly focusing on sculptural pieces which is bigger scale than what I normally make. In West Dean, it’s not completely jewellery making workshop they also has a tool for making some metalware and slightly medium piece also. So I feel really free to think about what I want to do.
Although, metal work is time consuming. I only got to made some sample on metal stripes and only tried some cold joining methods.Polishing machine is also really helpful, as I work on the subject of shininess - everything that is polished looks fit to my project.
