An end is in sight

Contrary to what the utter lack of posting lately has indicated, I have in fact been very very busy making and designing things. That said, I very much do NOT recommend going through a bad depressive episode during grad school. That way lies misery, guilt, and sorrow. However, thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, I have been able to pick myself up these past couple months and have made real progress towards my final MFA degree show.

Naturally, however, the catwalk show which occurs before the degree show is only four weeks away and there is still SO MUCH to finish! With depression somewhat subdued, I am no longer spending my days struggling to get out of bed, but instead spending my days convincing myself that I don't need to pick up a million new hobbies and projects immediately...

After May I can sew for myself and pick up tablet weaving and make all the bath bombs and perfumes and incenses that I like (and post some of the many, MANY blog posts I have already planned and sort of drafted). For now I have a design book to finish, and a hussar inspired Queen and an 1820s Devil to make.

Til then, here are a few pictures I snapped behind the scenes at a recent photoshoot (for show promo etc.). I had chosen two costumes in the photoshoot, both of the same main character from my story The Girl Without Hands. My two lovely models, Poppy and Charlotte, are both undergraduates in the Performance Costume programme at ECA. I can't wait to post some of the resulting official photos later... they turned out beautifully!

Silver Hands

A slight change of pace today.  As the name itself implies, The Girl Without Hands features a main character who looses her hands (through a foolish deal with the Devil that her father made).  A little later on she receives silver hands to wear... eventually getting real, human hands again thanks to her goodness and the kindness of an angel.  I'm thinking of turning the angel into a female scientist in my rendition of the tale, but that's really by the by.  What really matters right now is that I'm planning on creating silver hands as part of the overall costuming.

I've spent some time looking at 19th century prosthetics, as well as metalwork from the 18th and 19th centuries plus some pieces of contemporary haute couture which thematically works.

I love this utterly creepy Victorian prosthetic arm.  I don't believe I want to make on myself that is articulated, but I still am fascinated by this piece.

At the moment I'm looking at a couple different techniques for making the hands, although it'll probably be a little while until I can get into the metals studio and try them out.  I'm interesting in trying both electroplating and electrotyping to create metal hands based upon life-molds taken from the model (whoever that turns out to be).

Electroplating permanently bonds a coating of metal to whatever it is you've properly treated and immersed in the chemical bath, while electrotyping adheres to the agent itself and creates a copy from a mold.  Since I want to create metal hands that are essentially wearable in glove-like fashion, whatever it is I make will have to be hollow.  Electrotyping seems like it would be an ideal solution in this instance, although the technique was maining popular during the Victorian era.  To create something like that through electroplating, I believe I would have to create a cast of the model's hand and arm out of wax, which I could then coat in metal using the electroplating after which I would melt the wax out.

I have no idea yet which techinque might be more appropriate or yield better results... if I want to do raised relief decoration on the silver hands (which I would like to do), it seems as if doing that on a wax cast would be the easiest way.  But I think I won't know until I get in the studio and actually try it all out.

Or I could do a combination of metalwork and stitchery... like these killer shoes by Alexander McQueen.