Touchmarks

I am told that "artists sign their work"....perhaps that is all it takes to be one.

In tradition, artists in metal "signed" their work with a touchmark. A touchmark is an acronym or symbol which represents an individual or shop. It is usually a stamp or punch with a positive image (reversed or symmetrical) which is indented as a negative image - right reading. The same tradition which gave us touchmarks had something which is lacking today, a comprehensive and widely acknowledged registry of artists touchmarks correlated to contact information. The medieval guilds of Europe established and maintained such registries which that day's patrons knew of, so they would use it. Today, touchmarks are as anachronistic as selecting the proper flight feathers of a goose for arrow fletching. Try a Google search on a squiggle indented in an excellent piece of contemporary work. Now try entering "Samuel Yellin".

Though Mr. Yellin has been gone nigh 60 years, his work is both collectable (because it is outstanding) and identifiable (because he stamped his name). With today's widely searchable data bases structured for language it is best to get a stamp which let's you sign your work with your name.......unless total anonymity is your goal in which case go with a touchmark's squiggle.


11" Diameter Bronze Light by George Dixon
(bottom above, side below)
Chisel-cut, chased, mica backed

There are five pierced panels, dogwood flower details are monel.

Materials; constants and professionalism

The world of the artist-blacksmith is founded on metal.

The skills of the artist-blacksmith are those of moving metal; forming, joining or piercing it.

Skills, and the outcomes toward which they are employed, are either enhanced or encumbered by attitudes.

One attitude which encumbers skill and adversely affects outcomes is the idea that blacksmiths are junk meisters. Old coil spring and rusty metal have an allure...they seem cheap, usually because they have been thrown away by someone who saw them for what they were.....junk.
(Leave the junk to the 'found object' class from the local art department........)

Let's look at materials.
Nothing is free, not even the gold at the bottom of the dumpster behind the spring company.
There are two real costs in the shop of an artist-blacksmith: your time and the shop overhead (30 day business cycle stuff). Given the cost of new, clean metal...delivered....your time is far more expensive.

Spring steel is not tool steel, it's, well...spring steel - alloyed for flexibility. Used springs have flexed a bazillion times and that imparts stress. So when you go hunting a coil spring to use for chisel stock (it's free!!), then you cut the coil (gas torch & fuel), heat the pieces to straighten them, then forge a slitting chisel...you have spent time and resources to acquire and prepare the wrong material for your tool. How 'free' is that?
Use new tool steel. It comes UPS. It comes stress free. It comes straight. It comes soft enough to saw or file. It is the right alloy for the tool. And, compared to the exercise described above with the coil spring, it is far closer to 'free' in a true cost comparison.

The artist-blacksmith uses mild steel for projects. Some seek used materials here too. As unfortunate; some store new materials unprotected outside, allowing one of the main advantages of new metal to rust away.

Chisel-cut 18 gauge mild steel.
Coal forge fired texture on new steel.

The advantage of clean, new material is that it has a constant quality about it. A 'smith once said that rusted metal has more texture.....true, its called rust. A 'found object' texture.......
If you want texture, impart it and you can both control the outcome and repeat it later.
Incorporate a used (rust) texture and should you want to repeat it.....what, wait for rain?

New metal, tool steel or mild steel, are like blank paper.
They are ready for anything.
Try drawing on dirty paper with a stick dipped in soot, then get back to me about the advantages of scrounged or rusty metal and used coil springs.

Is it Art yet?

Time frames are relative.
In the time frame during which most art-blacksmithing techniques were developed there was no 30 day business cycle. There were no phone and electric bills due by the 10th of the month. There was no mass production by which to be compared....

Compare time, cost and functionality of the progression from decision-to-aquisition of door hardware from an artist-blacksmith or from Sears. Clearly, Sears will win in the first two categories with a tie in the third.
So to compete would be foolish.

Instead, the artist-blacksmith has the challenge of making door hardware ( in this example...or anything in life) which is unique, visually rich, and as smoothly functional as a $200 Sears storm door.....and of making it for a good price (to the maker).
All within the context of the 30 day business cycle......



What to do?
Pursue excellence in your work. Never compromise vision, process or execution.....ever!
You can pursue money and, perhaps, you will find it.
Pursue excellence in your work and money will happen.

Besides, if you want to get an idea of what God thinks about money, just look at the people he gives it to......

The 'B' Word

How much should one charge for a rail or for door hardware?
Should one total the materials, figure a shop hourly charge, guesstimate the hours to make said project, add some for overhead, add some more for profit and then add the pile up for a price?

I think not.
Car repair is figured by the hour. Ready-made replacement parts combine with specialty tools to create a repair environment which can be measured, quantified and calculated. By that measure; the cost of a couple of tubes of paint, a brush and some canvas, plus the hours (times a rate per) gives you the price for a painting or 'marble plus a chisel times an hourly rate gives you a statue'.



If one makes the design and the work at a level of competence which the market will recognize, then we are not talking shop rates and material costs, we are talking job budgets....budget - the 'B' Word.

A serious client-consumer (often with a legion of architects, interior designers, contractors and family members in tow) will have established or agreed to a budget for the project at hand. Architects cannot specify to a client without knowing both the clients budget ("!!THAT much!??" to "Cool, when will it be done") range and the market range for the work in mind. They establish a budget.

So, when an inquiry about work lands (style and type is defined or a design is sought), the first question is "what is the budget?"
You then talk time frame: "you want it when?"
Now, with a dollar figure, a job description and a time frame (faster costs more) you can work toward a single, pre-established number and calibrate your work accordingly. More budget allows for more embellishment.

Bidding is a race to the lowest denominator, the low bidder having often lost by winning (they now have the low bid work in shop and have to produce the work for less than you wanted....pity them). Negotiating is the path to making good work (art) for a good price.
Ask for the 'B' Word next time, every time.

Art and Craft

There is an ongoing struggle between what is craft and what is art.
Art gets at least one extra zero and usually a comma in the price.
Craft work and artisan work is usually what is considered functional while art knows no boundries of function. In fact, art eschews function. It is all chiseled in some stone somewhere and cannot be overturned.......

Georgia O'Keeffe was an artist....her work art. She did pottery vessels among other things. They are art (price one, it's art)

So, were I to buy a O'Keeffe pottery vessel at auction I'd pay a very arty price. It is art.
I bring the vessel home and put it on the mantle, as art.
Years later someone uses the vessel for apples on a table at lunch......
Later still, I decide to sell the vessel, art that it is, but in my haste I forget to remove one apple.
It sells at auction for more than I paid.....art appreciates.
BUT, upon getting their art vessel home the new owners discovery an apple left from when it served part of lunch. They were robbed, it had function....remove a zero or two and sell it at a craft fair or remove the offending apple and call it art again?


Art is long - Life is short - Get Going!!!


In truth the art V craft debate is shallow.
Finely worked door hardware, functional though it may be, can convey all of the same forged form and visual meaning as if they had no function but were just adorning the door. Conversely, a red box with FEAR stenciled on it or a stack of ocean buoys may be sans function but only an emperor in seach of new clothes would call them art.

Control is better than correction in art

Art is a physical manifestation of a mental concept. To convey what you see in your mind's eye to the casual eye of the viewer you must have masterful control of your medium. This means practice, it means pushing your execution and control of the materials at hand so that they readily assume that physical representation of your idea.

Lacking control of your medium the best one can achieve is a suggestion as opposed to a conveyance of a concept through accurately expressed imagery.

In a perfect world, four years of art school would be focused on work within a medium with the sole consideration of control of the processes and materials involved. Picasso drew anatomically accurate pidgeon feet repeatedly to achieve mastery of shade and shape long before he drew his first abstract bull. For Picasso, abstract was after mastery, not instead of it.

When I sought instruction in repousse' I called art schools. I spoke to professors who knew of the process but to an individual they said it took too long to teach.....
So I taught myself and though the path of discovery without guidance was long and slow, it took less time than 4 years in college.

Time was not the issue, patience was and is. Control cannot be taught in a series of emotional expressions or through every art departments default mode of "found objects". Control of materials comes first then emotions expressed through artwork will be accurately conveyed and more importantly they will be accurately perceived.

Art: Ears & Eyes

If the eye worked like the ear there would be far less bad art in the world. If eyes reacted to bad art the way ears react to bad music then you'd run from most 'art' long before the 'artist' had the chance to launch into the title and explanation....if it has an explanation then it didn't work so it must be art.

Alas, by today's art standard, not having ever trained to read music nor having a clue how to make notes happen, I am a perfect candidate to be an improvisational jazz artist. (Recall when artists painted, musicians tooted and dancers danced....today they are all 'artists' which means that being an artist is both everything and (more often) nothing.

Before creativity must come discipline. One must master a medium technically before larding on the emotional expression stuff that passes for art instruction today. If one cannot realise a physical manifestation of a mental image...a thought accurately conveyed and portrayed in solid form, then all the art-speak in the world is for naught. Master a medium technically....then think about what you want to express.
Anything less should make your eyes hurt.