My First Commissioned Piece of Metalwork

The photo on the right is my commission piece, I was requested to form the piece. I purchased all my materials for my clients design from the university. I first scanned the drawing onto a computer and blow it up to one-one scale. Having printed the design I now had a scaled template. The techniques I used to create the piece were the techniques that I had been taught whilst at university.










The photo below is the finished piece installed on the door by my client.

The Chest-Adornment

After the creation of my two arm pieces I decided to go bigger and create a piece of body adornment which takes its two main pieces of inspiration from the technique of fold forming. Which has appeared through out my project and the piece of armour called unsurprisingly a chest-plate. Which where first made out of leather. Later versions where made of bronze, iron and steel, even after the invention of gun powder chest-plates often referred to as a breast-plate where still the best body defence again a melee weapon like a sword or axe.

Unlike the breast-plates of old, my creation is not designed to repel attacks from arrows, swords and any other weapon that you could name. Though it may provide some protection from glancing shots of a sword for example. But many kings and rulers like king Henry 8th of England had sets of armour which where not made with 'combat' in mind but where purely decorative but would still protect you.


It is here where the term 'ceremonial' Armour comes in, a set of armour that is highly decorated and is worn to be looked at and the more elaborate the armour the richer and more influential you where.

    

Strange Ideas

As with many interesting Ideas I've ever had, they always came to me at a time when I was not trying to make something. This piece is simply every piece of fold formed copper, personally I found that it reminded me of ivy or vines over lapping and intertwining.     

This idea came about when some friends of mine where arranging my fold formed piece into a new form. This was the only one that I took a photo of and now wish that I had taken photos of the other arrangements, this reminds me of a lizard or a type of amphibian sticking its long tong out to catch an unsuspecting insect and just to add to he scene I put one of my bronze case leaves under the piece resembling a caterpillar.

Starting At The Beginning

I have been working on creating pieces of body adornment that are inspired by natural and organic Armour, and made from copper using fold forming.

Great Inspiration

After a talk with my tutor, he suggested I look at things that I am interested in, I turned to the   game I play more than most, Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (I would like to give my complements to the team of artists designers and every one who worked on creating this amazing game) I look at some of the armour sets found in the game as well as its down loadable content which are made out of armoured animals like in these examples the venoms giant insect-like Chaurus, the fast Ash Hopper and the powerful and monstrous dragons.

Frst Steps of Body Adornment

Once I had looked and decided
what style and idea I wanted to go with as a piece of adornment using fold forming I made a test piece to see what it looked like and its fit.

This piece of adornment would fit onto the wearers wrist as demonstrated.

 

This is a fellow artist (Andy) being a model for a number of my pieces, you can see the piece that I have just mentioned on his fore-arm my first colour experiment around his wrist, two of my experimental pieces on his finger and thumb and also another piece that I created as body adornment place over his upper-arm

this piece was made to fit to my upper arm and is the biggest piece of fold forming I have made to date but due to the material only being 0.5mm thick copper it is very light.

 

Other inspirations

I also looked at animals like the sea turtle who's shell protects it from all predators apart from creature like the great white shark and tiger shark.

Salt water Crocodile skin

Mantis shrimp

I also started looking at animals that have been dead for millions of years and had armour.

 

The Ankylosaurus was one of the most heavily armoured dinosaurs that ever lived, the living tank of the late cretaceous period (68-66 million years ago.    Stegosaurus

Styracosaurus

 

IDEA: One of the best forms of defence is intimidation so with that idea the ankylosaurus's club, stegosaurus's spikes and styracosaurus's horns are a form of offensive Armour.

???What do you think???