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.

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.

 

Fold Forming: Evolution of Colour

 

 After creating my experiments in the post (Beginnings of Fold Forming), I decided to try creating a multiple folded piece, where as the first one was only one fold this would be a 5 fold piece which is more difficult due to the fact that I had to get an even heat through the metal. As well it takes longer for the metal to curve but in the end just before I opened it up to see what new interesting form I had created I noticed the interesting colours caused by the annealing process so instead of putting it in to the pickling tank I left it and when I opened it the colours where incredible

 

I liked the new and varying colours of this new change so much that I have continued using it in much of my later work.

 

Beginings of Fold Forming

 My First Experiments with fold forming using the basic technique which I have already explained in a previous post (Basic Fold Forming Copper). 

These piece where put in to a pickling tank (Acid Bath) and if you leave them in the bath for long enough the coppers crystalline structure begins to show but once it has been out of the pickle for a set amount of time it will begin to build up an oxide layer to protect the metal. 

Basic Fold Forming (Copper)

1. Take a piece of copper sheet and annealing it (heat it up till the copper glows a dull red then immediately quench in to cold water)
2. Take the piece of copper out of the water and fold in half, hammer the fold flat and anneal again.
3.  Remove your folded copper from the water and take it to an anvil or bench plate, place the metal on the very edge of the anvil, using the pointed end of a Cross Pien Hammer hit the fold of the metal.
4. Make sure you hit the fold the full length of the fold on both sides.
5. Once you have hammered both sides of the fold enough anneal the copper.
6. Repeat the process of hammering and annealing till you are happy with the amount that the metal has curved, anneal once.
7. Take the metal out of the water, then use any implement that can fit into the gap on the unfolded side of the copper and gently prise the two sides apart (do note that the metal will continue to curve as you open the metal)

8. Optional step  If you want to clean up the piece you can by placing the metal in to a pickling tank ( a bath of acid) which will remove the oxide layer from the metal ( Or if you like the oxide colours as I did with my work, leave the metal alone)

 That is the basics of fold forming thank you and I hope this has been helpful            

 
 
 Cross-Pien Hammer