Last week at WHS

Last week of school. The blooms have all fallen off of the blackberry bushed and the honeysuckle is so pungent that you would think you were in a perfume factory. The temprature is on the low side of 90 degrees. Hot, hot, hot. It sure has been great taking classes at William Holland School for the Lapidary arts. This week, as in other weeks, there have been some fun people here at the school. Two guys from Kentucky kept the fused glass class howling. One morning they came down to the cafeteria and placed their right forefinger and thumb on their forehead depicting the classic “looser” symbol and cheerily greeted everyone with “Greetings fellow Lapidarians” I highly recommend this school for your next vacation. Where could you possibly go and for around $500.00, learn a craft, get fed three country meals a day, 6 nights lodging, develop a truck load of new friends and have a ball doing it? Can’t be done.

I had Silver 1 class this week and it seemed like it might be a little slow going, but in no time I convinced the teacher that I had abilities far superior to the average beginner that she pretty much cut me loose and let me do side projects as long as I did the class projects and kept up. One of the things that I wanted to do was to make a pendant that had the initials of the school "William Holland School" (WHS) out if silver and donate it to the school for their Tuesday night auction. It was a challenging project in that each stroke of the letters were individual pieces that had to be soldered together then mounted into the pendant oval. I ended up making two of them one slightly larger than the other just in time for the auction.



The larger one sold for $35.00 and the smaller sold for $45.00. Needless to say I was quite surprised that they sold at such a high price and the same person ended buying both of them. The man who bought them was a teacher at the school and I wondered why he was so anxious to get the pendants. I thought it was because he wanted to support the school and have an item with the school’s initials. Later I found out the real reason. This gentleman grew up during the WWII, all kinds of things were rationed and in short supply. Metal of all types were hard to get and his high school class did not have an opportunity to get class rings or for that matter any school memento other than his certificate of graduation. The name of his school was “Woodstock High School” (WHS).

Earlier I mentioned the Fused Glass class. They produced an obscene quanity of beautiful projects. here are four of the seven student's work.









Wire 1 did a good job too.


Wire 2 class seemed to lack focus, but the work was first class






Cabochons was well represented






Chain class had some very unique projects




Glass beads had a very interesting project in addition to making their normal amount of fantastic beads. Each student was to find a photograph and make a bead that blended or represented that photo. I was impressed with their results.
I'm noy sure if you can see it but sitting in the middle of the photo is a bead that almost blends with the picture.




There were two new classes that have not been represented on my blog they are “Polymer Clay” and “Intarsia” Polymer clay is a plastic clay that is worked much like clay or play dough then baked at low temperatures. I realy had little knowledge of this craft but I was impressed with their projects.






Intarsia is a class that I want to take some day. It is the precision assembling of small pieces of stone, wood, metal and almost any other durable product into a small display, ie. pendant, pin, ring, plak or almost any thing you can come up with. It is like a mini puzzle. Some are way cool.


These pieces are assembled but not cut and polished


Then there is our Silver 1 class


These are my projects close up.








And this was my favorite. It was more difficult to make than it should have been because I did not have any flat silver that was wide enough so I had to solder two pieces together and at the same time incorporate the round 10 gauge wire down the middle. The decorative wrapping is 14 gauge sterling wire. I am pleased with the result.






This morning I sat down and played with some 21 gauge, square, half hard, copper wire and knocked out these


I left Sundowner RV Park Saturday Morning and went back to Franklin NC to see if I could make a deal with the Old Corundum campground owner for some rocks that he said he wanted to sell. I will get with him Monday and see what I can do.

Till then. Wear fins

AV