flatware fall 2014

I have always been inthralled by flatware and the tradition that metalsmiths have had in the creation of flatware. I remember taking my first metals course and falling in love the functional objects that were traditionally designed and made by early smiths. Although early flatware would have been forged from cast billets, I thought it might be nice for my students to apply their newly learned industrial techniques to the creation of a unique set of flatware. The images above are the result of their first seven weeks of class. All of these pieces were hand fabricated; no CNC. Probably half of these students had never cut a piece of metal or used an industrial grinder before stepping into this class. I was truly pleased with the work that happened as a result of extreme dedication and work by this group of students. Their second major project was equally impressive and I will post pics of it soon.

Sidenote: One of my colleagues mentioned that it was nice that the students had created the above computer renderings of these pieces for documentation purposes. I told her that these students had never fully modeled the flatware in Rhino as we did did not cover 3D modeling in this course. I also had to tell her that the images above WERE NOT computer renderings, but that they were un-edited digital images from my camera.  Funny stuff...