I am making a series of brooches, un-wearable and cast in lead.
They are a group or part of a collection and they speak of Roman lead curses, lead votive pilgrim badges, war won (war worn) medals, souvenirs and mementoes. As amulets for modern living or literal burdens to be worn and carried about. I am thinking about invested objects and their verisimilitude.
Lead with its connotations of the industrial, the poisonous and toxic, and its weightiness; and brooches, too, with their history of being pretty, decorative and way of marking out the wearer
I am using traditional casting methods with cuttlefish bones and silicon whose transparent supple skin yields hard metal shapes.
The lead will be made precious with additions of pearls and coral; coral with its supposed ability to keep away the evil eye and its associations of ‘life blood’.
Blanket, cotton bandage, soft woollen fabric or silk might be attached. Silk for striped medal ribbons. I like the mixture of textures and there is already something soft about lead.
