MINERALARTS:

I just put four new bells on my website – they have been lying around the shop half-done for months.  Finally got them out of the way so I can concentrate on newer projects.  Here’s one of them.  Jellyfish is forged from a triangle of 1/8″ steel plate, with the corners split, drawn out, rounded, and polished.  The clapper is a tapered coil.  I may add more links.  This one was a lot more work than most of my bells.  It has a beautiful light, clear, sustained sound – I’ll put a video up on YouTube in the next couple of days.

Craterellus is named for Craterellus cornucopioides, a black trumpet-shaped edible fungus.  A very stylized drawing of it appears on the Ironwing Tarot Seven of Bells card.  This is a nested triplet of cone bells forged from 1/8″ plate.  The two larger bells are drilled through the side and the three bells are wired together.  The large bell has black steel wire fringe on the sides, and the medium-sized one has steel wire spirals (not visible in the photo).  All three bells were flared on the anvil horn, then crimped with pliers while hot to give them a wavy edge.  The edges are highly polished.  A pretty bell that was probably more work than it was worth, since the clinky sound isn’t as loud or bright as I’d hoped.  Still, it would make a very decorative and pleasantly noisy decoration for a drum or costume.