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Queen Elizabeth's Fan
12-1-04: While I haven't been updating all along, I finally finished the fan today. Getting close to the exhibit opening, rehearsals start this weekend, like Saragrace, my time is unfortunately better spent working on the items than writing about them here! In any event, I took pictures throughout and will do the update all at once today.
I started by making a sketch around the miniature of the proposed fan base shape and then making a stencil. Here's a picture of the stencil around the miniature so you can see the shape I ended up with. I then rolled out black polymer clay to about 1/4" thick, cut two base plates, and fired them. After this, I went back over the plates and added glass gems, shaping new clay for the settings, and coating the entire top surfaces in a rough texture meant to simulate a sort of "hammered" look. It's pretty indistinct in these pictures, and I had to affix and shape a frame for the miniature directly to the plate, unfortunately, but I couldn't think of any other options I had time for that wouldn't make the fan too thick on that side. I then fired the two plates with the gems and miniature in place. This was a bit exciting, the miniature actually shrank a bit in its setting and I had to go back over the edges and fire it again. Gosh, I hope the miniature artist isn't reading this!
After all these fires, I pried out the gems and turned to adding the handle and bringing it all together. I measured and cut a knobbed dowel that I got from SG to the desired length, and then variously whittled and sanded the end to make the part that would be between the plates flatter. I, ahem, super-glued, this portion down for insurance, and added excess soft clay around the edges of the plate and at the interior as you can see in the third picture below. I then sandwiched the two plates together and smoothed out the seams. I added a layer of clay over the dowel for texture continuity, and then returned to the top edge to make the piercings for the feathers before I fired it again, without the feathers, of course. Oh, and I ended up ordering new feathers from www.ostrich.com, they are beautiful, and I have plenty left over for some other projects, like maybe a German gown sometime next year.
After this final firing, I painted the whole thing with the Classic Gold Liquid Leaf stuff again, being extra careful around the miniature, gave it a coat of the acrylic gloss, and glued in the gems and feathers. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, though it seems ridiculously large. When I study the portraits, however, it appears to be proportionally correct, go figure. Saragrace and I are finding that to be the case in many aspects of this outfit, I must say. I'll be working on the lay of the feather fingers, too, I haven't rearranged the edges to give them that layered look yet. Still, voila!
9-9-04: Not too much to say here, but here are some crops of the particular fan base of Elizabeth's that I want to recreate. Probably I'll do it in sculpey over some kind of armature, and I'll set in some of those glass jewels I got for the girdle. I have a fan that I got on clearance that I'll steal the feathers from, they're white ostrich, in pretty good shape.
I had also picked up this tassel for the fan while we were in LA shopping for the fabric, it goes really well with the materials, but I don't know yet for sure if I will use it.
