I made this new hanging sign for the gallery building entrance today using wood letters from signlettersource.com When I figured out after making one letter out of plywood- how much time I would have to spend dinking around with cutting out 15 letters, sanding them etc., and the fact these purchased on line were a little over $4 each, it was a no-brainer, I could have spent the better part of an afternoon printing out paper letters to carbon paper trace onto plywood, then scroll cut them all out and I’d never the nice shark clear edges and corners they do with a commercial CNC router. It took me exactly…

I purchased this circa 1895 stunning 15″ x 15″ copper cornice lion this week, it arrived today in fact. It came from a NYC building demolished in the 1980s, probably a building that would likely have been 7-12 stories in height given the size of the lion. There’s not a whole of of copper cornices in the city, painted hot zinc dipped sheet metal was the most commonly used. Copper was used on more expensive buildings- hotels, municipal/city buildings, schools etc. usually the copper gets scrapped if the building is abandoend any length of time or demolished, so plenty of these fine examples of American 19th century die-pressed copper cornices…

And today I have this model pretty much finished, other than minor touchup as the clay dries out. And now I will start work on the next model. I guess this is as good a spot as any since the other topic of this post is actually connected to this building too, I decided to make a call to a fellow named Antonio I used to work with in this building way back around 1978-1982, he got me a job in the building working night security on weekends, in fact I think this was my first real job outside of working a bit for my father. It was a union…

I did some more work on this model today, still not quite firm enough to do much more than rough modelling, but I expect this week I can finish it up and refine the details by next weekend and finish it then. acanthus2-9-2014 by fb210

I am finishing my large model at this time that I had started a couple of weeks ago- the acanthus leaf frieze panel, once I finish that and it’s removed from my studio easel, I think I’ll make a reduced size mock-up of the design I had in mind and see how it “works.” When I have that started, maybe next weekend- I’ll take photos of it and post them here. I also had plans for quite a while to purchase a larger kiln for my larger models but with one thing or another I put it off, however, I found just the perfect size kiln and the dealer has…

After several days of back and forth phone tag the seller of this ca 1893 terracotta plaque made by the Union Pressed Brick and Terracotta Co of S.F. Calif we came to a meeting of the minds on this and for it’s shipping. The panel measures 16x24x4″ and is made from red clay mined in Valejo where the factory had their brick production plant. The company history was interesting to read about, the founders happened to notice some high quality red clay by 5th street and Solano Ave in Valejo. One thing led to another and in 1889 they acquired 35 acres there and broke ground to build the new…

I did some more work on this model today, the first day I could (or felt like) working on it this week due to my schedule, still roughing out the form but I am starting a little refining now that the clay is just starting to get a little firmer. I also made two videos which I’ll upload to Dailymotion. Cable Building Acanthus Leaf Frieze 2-1-2014 by fb210 Pt 2 (no narration) Pt 2 cable building acanthus by fb210