Next in my birthstone color series is August’s Peridot green. Peridot is said to glow with its own inner light, called “gem of the sun” by the Egyptians. One of the most delightful thing about glass is a similar inner light, and this necklace definitely glows.
For the history, mythology and chemistry of each stone, check out the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
Related:
At a craft show, someone asked if my mosaic pendants were symbolizing different birth months, and that gave me the challenge to do one for each birthstone color. I started with July.
I am partial to ruby because I was born in July. I had a birthstone ring with a glass ruby in the center and a glass diamond on either side. I loved that ring–even then I liked sparkly glass! One day I was swinging in the back yard, and the ring kept clanking with the chain on the swing, and I decided to take it off, and since I didn’t have a pocket, I carefully tucked it into the waistband of my shorts. Unsecured, it slipped through and I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t believe it could disappear so quickly.
A few years later, I was planting sunflower seeds by the side of the house, and dug up my ring, caked with dirt, and corroded in places, but I was thrilled to have it back. I kept it in my jewelry box, since it didn’t fit anymore, and I still have it.
I used to pore over the Sears Catalog, which had a convenient birthstone chart, and ponder the different gem for each month of the year. My sister was garnet for January, which was red like mine, but much darker. I was somewhat disillusioned to find that this chart probably originated with the Association of Jewelers of America. . .There are many different charts. For the history, mythology and chemistry of each stone, check out the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Ruby is second only to diamond in hardness, which I didn’t know.
Feel free to contact me if you are planning ahead for a birthday month, and check out my Nutmeg Designs Etsy Shop for current stock.
Today was the beginning of the SITS Problogger Challenge, and the assignment is to encapsulate what my blog is about. One thing I learned in my previous life as a poet and teacher of creative writing and composition is that what you think you are saying and what you are actually saying are often two different things. Maybe you have had the experience of writing something, or making art, and putting it away and coming back to it a few months later, and it looks entirely different to you. You see things.
Megan Auman over at Crafting an MBA has a cool post about your story being valid no matter what. She’s a jeweler who got a degree in jewelry, and she assumed that was prosaic. But then she tells how excited she was to discover you can go to college to learn metalsmithing, and only one of two people in her class to get this degree. I remember when I went to graduate school in creative writing, and like Megan, felt apologetic for being a poet who got a degree in poetry. In fact there was a whole school of criticism of MFA programs, declaring them homogenizing and bland, and arguing that only craft can be taught, not how to write. “Well crafted” was an insult to hurl at a poem.
The turning point in my story came when I realized in my mid-30’s that I wanted to make visual art. I knew I loved making things, but assumed that was irrelevant. I didn’t think of myself as an artist. I thought of myself as a poet who spent most of her time avoiding writing poetry. This is such a familiar narrative of writers’ block, that I assumed I just needed to try harder, especially since other people told me I was good at poetry, therefore of course I should write it. But I voluntarily make mosaics. My husband, partner in art and love, calls me the “Mosaicing Mad Woman of Lansdale.” It’s not that I don’t meet obstacles of perfectionism and procrastination, but they are not my sole focus.
So what is this blog about? I am taking my best guess here. I’m sure this will evolve, but for now, I see
What do you see? I’d love to know.
From the Attic:
The first time I came to Hawley in 1996, it was like discovering a secret world. Stratoz and I walked along Lake Wallenpaupack and the park benches along the dam gave us a lovely view.
We stopped at the Settlers Inn for lunch, unaware of the magical interior–Arts and Crafts wallpaper with swirls of greenery and rabbits, a fireplace with pottery on the mantle in luscious green and copper glazes, wooden chairs with hymnal racks on the backs rescued from a cathedral. 
Lunch was made with produce from local farmers, which I thought was a marvelously novel idea. Little did I know that almost 15 years later this kind of partnership between restaurants and farms would be widespread. I am happy to have a reason to be in Hawley with the Audubon Art and Craft Festival. The booth is set up and we are ready to be part of other people's discovery of Hawley.
Related Post: Coffee Before and After the Audubon Craft Show at Cocoon in Hawley, PA
My husband and I are back from a vacation to Washington DC, which was a visual delight. I made sure to go to the Library of Congress, since I am a librarian by training, and the Jefferson Building’s mosaics coincided with my artistic passion. This mosaic of Minerva, Roman Goddess of Wisdom and Learning, has its own niche at the top of a flight of stairs and was designed by Elihu Vedder.
The mosaic even has its own lesson plan online for teachers, and explains the symbolism of the shield being on the ground–it is a sign of peace, though Minerva is ever vigilant with her double pointed spear. Observing such a display of tribute to learning, I felt a sense of loss of library as place. According to the LOC website, “The Library of Congress was established by an act of Congress in 1800 when President John Adams signed a bill providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. The legislation described a reference library for Congress only, containing ‘such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress — and for putting up a suitable apartment for containing them therein….'”
Ironically, in spite of this gorgeous building, the Latin motto at
foot of the mosaic translates to “Not, unwilling, Minerva raises a monument more lasting than bronze.” The knowledge that is gleaned from this great collection is enduring. But I also believe that the beauty of these mosaics endures as well, speaking to another kind of knowledge.
I came back to work at my hospital library on Tuesday, and was met by my supervisor telling me that the administration had chosen to close the library and eliminate my position as librarian. He was very kind, and gave me all the time I needed to gather up my things from 12 years of service. It was very difficult to believe it was happening. I am deeply sad about leaving the people who have come to me with questions and needing information to help patients or further their education. I am also sad about leaving people who were my friends without a chance to say goodbye.
I do know that the knowledge I shared with them cannot be closed down, that it will remain. I also had the opportunity to bring my mosaics to a hospital craft show in March, and I am happy to know that several of my colleagues have some of my artwork as a presence in their lives. But it’s still hard to be gone.
We were heartened by last year’s premiere of the Lansdale Farmers’ Market, making regular Saturday walks to buy produce, baked goods and even mead from Cardinal Hollow Winery. This year we are excited to be part of the LFM, and selling our mosaics and stained glass right in our own back yard!
We will be doing 3 market days this summer. The first is June 5th, 2010, starts at 10:00, at Railroad Ave and Main Street. Yes, that is Lansdale Day, and LFM will be there as part of the community festivities, and giving people a sneak peak of what’s to come. We’ll be there until at least 1:00, maybe later, since Lansdale Day goes until 4:00. The other dates are still to be determined, but will most likely be the first Saturday of July and August.
Did you miss our stint at the Farmers’ Market? Don’t fear, Nutmeg Designs will be at the Lansdale Festival of the Arts on Saturday August 28th from 10-4 in Memorial Park, so stop in for beautiful crafts and then head to Railroad Plaza for veggies.
When I found out that Terry Tempest Williams had written a book on mosaic, I anticipated the loveliness of a fluid writer approaching one of my favorite subjects, but I was still awed by how wonderfully she captures mosaic as an art form, and as a way to find beauty in a broken world. She begins with a quote, “The very language of tesserae tells us that this harmony is only achievable through the breaking and then rediscovery of the mosaic fragments” Natascia Festa, Nittola. Then she wrote a kind of poetry:
A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.
A mosaic is a conversation that takes place on surfaces.
A mosaic is a conversation with light, with color, with form.
A mosaic is a conversation with time.
Tempest Williams immerses herself in mosaic, using her eyes and hands to fully experience the process, which then she expresses in her insightful words. I wrote poetry for many years, and to hear Williams bridging the distance between my love of words and my love of mosaic, is like a homecoming. She describes a conversation with one of her teachers, Marco De Luca:
De Luca explains the method. Our eyes are convex, not flat, so curved surfaces like the niche in a church provide a “place to rest our eyes.” He pauses, “I call this an embrace. In mosaics, it is in the curve that light is reflected–for me, this translates into a spiritual space.”
See an object is really about listening. He cradles his hands close to his mouth to explain. Art, by its nature, is expressive and creates this emotional reaction in the public. When my eyes are turned outward and inward at the same time, this is where I find my depth.(emphasis mine)
The public is used to figurative mosaics, representational mosaics, mosaics as paintings. He shakes his head. “I wanted to find the essential features of mosaic. I wanted to express my language of desire, making use of tesserae to express my emotions.”
I am interested in now in what my eyes can see, what my fingers can touch, what my hand can know by moving slowly across flesh, or fur, or feathers, or stone. I trust what I see. The surface of things is what we see. I trust what I touch. The surface of things is what we touch.
After learning about mosaics in Italy with teachers such as Luciana Notturni,Tempest Williams goes on to experience the mosaic transformations of Lily Yeh and the villagers in Rwanda she worked with to build a memorial at a mass grave in 2003.
Lily Yeh started to work with the power of public art in 1986 Philadelphia! She brought together residents of neighborhoods in North Philadelphia to transform vacant lots and abandoned buildings with mosaic and painting, often transforming the lives of the residents as well, with the Village of the Arts and Humanities.
Beauty…comes to us with no work of our own; then leaves us prepared to undergo great labor.
Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just.
Tempest Williams includes the above quotation from Scarry, and encourages us to take courage in beauty, to turn inward and outward at the same time.
I had never heard of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, but came across mention of her in a radio show, Engines of our Ingenuity, narrated by John H. Lienhard on public radio. Dorothy Crowfoot was born in 1910, in Egypt, and one summer before college, helped her parents excavate Byzantine churches with her ability to reconstruct mosaic floors from fragments. She considered archaeology in college, but chemistry and her fascination with crystals won out, though there is an intriguing reference to her spending a summer combining both by studying glass tesserae from the mosaics of Jerash, Jordan.
Lienhard presents a compelling picture of Crowfoot, describing a day in 1934 when she, “found she had crippling rheumatoid arthritis. Down through a very active life she’s worked in pain, with hands and feet terribly twisted.
Only hours after she found that out, people in her lab made the first X-ray photo of a protein crystal. And she realized she could go from a pointillist X-ray pattern — a broken Byzantine mosaic — to the 3-D structure of a complex organic molecule. That day, she said, began in pain and ended in a vision.”
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin went on to win the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work in x-ray crystallography, determining the structure of penicillin, insulin and B12. The beautiful drawing below is of insulin, made by Hodgkin, and presented to Dr. Helen Megaw, crystallographer and organizer of the Festival Pattern Group in Britain, 1951. Hodgkin refused to accept a fee for the drawing, or take copyright for a pattern perpetuated by nature.
Megaw loved pattern, and dedicated an exhibit as part of the Festival of Britain, to the wonders of scientific pattern, as applied to wallpaper, fabric, china and other domestic objects. She gave Hodgkin a linen pillow embroidered with the crystal structure of aluminum hydroxide as a wedding gift.
I love this idea of art as a way to express science. The beauty of our world goes beneath the surface.
Over at Stratoz:
There’s something about mosaics that draws people. I came across these photos of mosaics made by the playwright(among other things, including Congresswoman) Clare Booth Luce, which she gave to Frank Lloyd Wright at his Arizona home Taliesin West.
I know Luce’s name because of a play she wrote, The Women, which was also made into a movie. Intrigued , I discovered that Luce was introduced to mosaic by Louisa Jenkins, a mosaic artist from Big Sur California. Luce’s daughter Ann, a student at Stanford, died in a car accident at 19. In her grief, Luce converted to Catholicism and commissioned artists to design a chapel in Ann’s memory at Stanford. Louisa Jenkins created the mosaic altar at St. Ann’s chapel, a Madonna with rosary. Jenkins was drawn to sacred art, and did many works for churches. I was sad that photos of Jenkins work on the web are almost non-existent
Through the wonders of interlibrary loan, I checked out Jenkin’s book on The Art of Making Mosaics from 1957. Her daughter Barbara Mills was a co-author, and together they have many observations that rang true.
“Any artist who has watched adults as well as children enter a studio where tables are spread with multi-colored trays of stone and glass can testify to the attraction of these materials. Baubles of glass, clinking stones, and bits of bright crystal seem to fill a hunger in people. To handle them is happiness.”
Perhaps handling these stones and glass gave Clare Booth Luce some happiness after the death of her daughter.
I’ve been thinking about my grandmother. She passed on December 5th, 2009, at age 89. She was a devoted Lutheran, and these photos are of mosaics that my mother helped make in youth group at St. Timothy’s Lutheran Church in El Paso, TX, a congregation that my grandmother and grandfather helped to start 55 years ago.
I remember these mosaics from the summers we visited my grandparents. Lutherans already seemed exotic, with their wine at communion and real bread rather than pressed white wafers, and they also had these mosaics. My church at home was plain, a Moravian church as ordinary as a basement in a suburban home, and we had grape juice at communion to keep from leading anyone astray.
When my mother sent these photos, I asked her how her youth group came to make mosaics. She said a guy she was dating drew the outlines and the pastor went across the border to Juarez and bought bags of glass tile. They broke them up inside plastic bags so the shards wouldn’t go everywhere, glued them down close together and left the pieces ungrouted. The mosaics have been up for 50 years and are still holding together.
It never occurred to me that because El Paso was on the border with Mexico, this could be the source of the glass. I love Mexican smalti; it has a variegated surface full of speckles and flecks of color. Italy of course is the cradle of smalti mosaic glass, but in 1949, Elpidio Perdomo founded Mosaicos Venecianos de Mexico (MVM). Mosaic became a pivotal art form in Mexico, with murals by Diego Rivera and Juan O’Gorman. Perhaps the tiles my mother used were from MVM. I have come full circle, now making my own mosaics with Mexican glass.
My grandmother enjoyed my mosaics and bought some to give as Christmas presents. I’m glad I was able to share them with her. This bottom mosaic is of the Luther Rose, the seal designed by Martin Luther as a symbol of his theology. He writes about the meaning of each color and form:
In a word, it places the believer into a white joyful rose, for this faith does not give peace and joy as the world gives. Therefore, the rose is to be white, not red, for white is the color of the spirits and of all angels.
This rose, moreover, is fixed in a sky-blue field, symbolizing that such joy in the Spirit and in faith is a beginning of the future heavenly joy. It is already a part of faith, and is grasped through hope, even though not yet manifest.
And around this field is a golden ring, to signify that such bliss in heaven is endless, and more precious than all joys and goods, just as gold is the most valuable and precious metal.
I know this is what my grandmother believed, and that what she grasped through hope, is now manifest.
