Joe Cornett was in charge of the metalsmithing program at Northern Arizona University. He is an absolutely amazing and talented artist. He focused on fundamentals, fabricating metal, how it worked and how to manipulate it. Joe studied under Heikki Seppa, an incredible metalsmith who passed away last year. One of my favorite pieces to make, which Joe learned from Seppa, is the spiculum.
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| Bracelet by Seppa, open spiculum |
The spiculum is created by starting off with a long triangle piece of metal & using a variety of forms & hammers, you contort a flat piece of metal into this hollow tube. I soldered the seam, annealed it one last time & the form allows you to bend and twist the metal into amazing shapes. This is just a simple pendant, but the technique is so versatile as you can see from Seppa's creation above.
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| Spiculum pendant |
It's difficult to create this at home. The metal needs to be annealed numerous times and I don't really have a torch system which gets hot enough to heat up such a large piece of metal. One day...
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