Lost Stone Necklaces and Earrings

These Elfshot obsidian necklaces and earrings will be available through Heritage Shops in Newfoundland and Labrador in the summer of 2011.   I'm not sure which of the dozen or so Heritage Shops they'll wind up in, but the shop at Port au Choix always has a big selection.  

I make these from flakes of obsidian that are the byproduct of knapping larger stone tools.  Usually flakes like these are discarded, but it seems a shame to lose all these beautiful translucent flakes.  So I save the most remarkable pieces and turn them into these necklaces and earrings.  I call them the Lost Stone series.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Round and Round Again...

Earrings and Necklaces to assemble

I suppose its appropriate that its Friday the 13th, considering what a nightmare our house has become because of all these partially completed orders.  If I can work through the weekend, I should be able to get my biggest wholesale order of the season finished and delivered to the Historic Sites Association by Monday.  That will clear a big physical and mental space for the next round of projects.

The handles still need finishing

Lori is heading out the door to her niece's birthday party and asked what I'm doing this evening.  I said the same thing I've been doing for the past month; filling wholesale orders.  I also have this blog post to write about the same thing that I've been blogging about for the past month; filling wholesale orders.  She said; "Good.  Its important that they know the monotony of it."  So there you go.  Now you know the monotony of wholesale artifact reproduction and archaeology inspired jewelry making.  *sigh*  More on Monday.

An acrylite jewelry display case.  Needs to be shipped to Manitoba  in the next week or so.

Caribou bone pin blanks soaking in borax.  I'll probably do another boil on them this evening to help with the degreasing.

Groswater Palaeoeskimo Knife.  This thing is pretty much finished.  I used an old bow drill spindle for the handle.  I carved off most of the usewear, but there's still enough poking through that it helps with character and antiquing.

Dozens of flintknapping kits taking up floor space until I can deliver and/or ship them.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Beothuk Pendant Reproductions

Relieved when they match

I finished the three Beothuk pendant reproductions that I've been working on over the past week or so.  I made them from caribou mandibles.  This was the first time I used caribou mandibles as the source for the bone, so it was a bit of an experiment.  Based on what I saw this past week, I will certainly use jawbones for pendant blanks again.  I wouldn't say that all Beothuk Pendants were made from caribou mandibles, but I feel that many of them likely were.

Beothuk Bone Pendant Reproductions. Range in length from 8 cm - 12.5 cm
The surface shown here is the smooth, exterior surface of the bone.  The interior surface tends to be a little rougher.  I signed them with tiny "TR"s along the lateral edge (not visible in this photo), so they won't be confused for the original artifacts.

Caribou Jawbones make good blanks

The mandibles provide good dense bone which is a perfect match for the thickness of the flat pendants and the slight curves and undulations seen in many of the original artifacts are very good matches for the blanks that come out of a caribou jaw bone.  The inside of the mandible has a little more surface texture, but its still very dense and holds the incised pattern quite well.

These are Beothuk bone pendants (and other bone pieces) on display in the Mary March Museum in Grand Falls-Windsor.

The interior, rough side 

I tried three areas of the jawbones for pendant blanks; the inside of the body of the mandible, the outside of the body of the mandible, and the ascending ramus.  The best bone came from the outside of the jawbone - it was the flatest and smoothest and provides the largest workable area.  The inside of the jawbone is a close second, although it has a slightly more irregular surface and the blanks aren't quite as flat.  The ascending ramus didn't work so well.  The bone on that part of the mandible is so thin that its translucent and I felt that it would create too fragile of a pendant.  It would also be very easy to gouge right through it while incising the pattern.

 Cathy Driedzic watercolour

I wanted to antique each one slightly differently, so that they wouldn't all look like they were made by one person at the same time.  I used red ochre for the finish, but I stained the blanks to different degrees with tea and charcoal to help change their appearance.  The archaeologist who commissioned these reproductions intends to display them together as a set and grow the collection over time.  I'm looking forward to seeing the collection grow.

This is a detail from Cathy Driedzic's watercolour Beothuk Bone Pendants.  Lori bought this painting for me in 2007 from a Craft Council Gallery show timed to coincide with the Canadian Archaeology Association's annual conference in St. John's. One of the pendants in this set happens to be the same as one in Cathy's painting.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Pendant Pencil Patterns

Beothuk Pendant progress

I made some progress on the Beothuk bone pendant reproductions.  I have the blanks finished and some of the major incised decorations carved.  I don't usually incise all the lines in one session.  Maybe its just my short attention span and the tendency of the pencil lines to smudge, but I usually incise the long outlines first and then mark out and add the short ticks and pattern details in a second and sometimes third carving session.  I use a dremel tool to carve the incised lines.

Checking them against the patterns

These are the pendants made from the caribou mandible blanks. The three pronged pendant is a new blank. Originally, I'd made a blank for that piece from the ascending ramus of a caribou mandible (the part that attaches to the skull), but it turned out to be too thin and fragile. The new blank is made from the body of the mandible, under the teeth - the same as the other two pendants.

Most of our basement look like this

The pendants aren't the only thing I'm working on - they are just the least repetitive things to blog about.  There are still dozens and dozens of points to knap and assemble into jewelry for spring wholesale orders.  That's what is filling up most of my days and nights, although Lori and I did get away to her parents cabin for a nice mother's day visit with the family, yesterday.  A highlight for me was the frequent visits from the new ravens living on an island in the middle of the pond.

A pair of ravens moved into the neighbourhood of Lori's parent' cabin.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

New Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador Website

The Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador has launched its brand new website: check it out!

Photo Credit: Screen Grab from http://www.craftcouncil.nl.ca/

Caribou Mandible Blanks

Bone blanks, mandible, and paper patterns

I spent most of the day notching glass and obsidian points, but I did sneak in a bit of bone working to get started on a few Beothuk pendant reproductions.  I have piles of caribou mandibles left over from the Wildlife Division and I used one to make the 3 blanks that I need for the pendants.  So far, so good.

I cut blanks from inside and outside of the body of mandible under the teeth , as well as one from the ramus.

Thin and flat

I've used long bones in the past for Beothuk pendant reproductions and the end products are pretty good, but they require a fair bit of shaping and thinning to get them down to the correct dimensions.  At first glance, it seems like the mandibles create flat blanks of the correct size and thickness, with much less effort.  I still have a bit of cleaning to do and I haven't finished the pendants yet, so my opinion might change, but so far the caribou mandibles seem like a pretty good source of the thin flat bone used by the Beothuk to make their pendants.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Still Monday

Chert points for jewelry

I'm still chipping away at filling spring wholesale orders and despite everything that's going on in the world today it still feels like a Monday.  I'm sunk by everything that needs to get done within the next couple of months, but I'm optimistic that getting an order in the mail this evening will help me get my head back above the surface.

Light at the end of the tunnel.  Fieldwork in Nunavut in less than two months

Photo Credits: Tim Rast