Bank Run

Midwinter is a good time to catch up on the more complicated items. The studio is consistently cool and damp, and pieces that have a lot of parts to put together can be assembled in a more leisurely fashion, as the pieces don't dry out so quickly. I spent Monday and Tuesday making banks.

At one point in my foolish youth, I had more than two dozen different kinds of animal banks, from pigs to penguins, whales and walruses. I also foolishly priced these high-labor, time-consuming items at a mere twenty bucks.

I really didn't value my time, back in the day.

Today, I've slimmed down the bank range to eight styles: pigs, elephants, hen and frog and cat, and three kinds of dinosaurs. I've raised the price--though $40 is probably still too low. But I've simplified some of the designs, and made a lot of specialized tools to help streamline the process of making them. I ran through a lot of pig and chicken banks during the holidays--for people bringing home the bacon, or starting their nest eggs--so that's what I made this week.

Piggy banks take a cork in the mouth to suggest a pig's flat snout. Corks are made in a variety of sizes, and initially, I'd just buy a variety and mix and match. It's a lot easier if I only have to get one consistent size, so I adapted a trick from my contract throwing days. I was making hummingbird feeders, which had to fit a specific size of stopper; Will provided a key-shaped rib to slide into the neck of the bottle to make the perfect width and taper. It was easy enough to size up the idea to a jumbo version, fit for an oversize cork.

While the wheel is turning, I slide the rib down just until the shoulders at the top engage with the lip. Result? A perfect match for a number 38 cork, sourced from the local home-brew supplier.

The chicken banks hide their stopper--or, as I call it to customers, "No penalty withdrawal"--underneath. I originally used a wooden cork there as well, but found rubber stoppers cheaper and less bulky. I still need to indent the bottom so the bank doesn't wobble on its stopper, so after I take them off the wheel, I set them over a bisqued hump mold, then poke a little hole to let some of the air out. This leaves a nice indent where I'll cut a hole the next day, when leather hard.

The bodies are then left uncovered overnight to firm up. I pinch and formed the add-on bits--beaks and tails, ears and feet--sitting on the sofa watching a Dr. Who DVD with Denise (The Runaway Bride, Catherine Tate is hilarious. I can see why they brought her back as a regular companion a year later.)

Tuesday morning, the pigs were still kinda sticky, but I was able to flip them over on their mouths to continue drying while I assemble the chickens. They'll be ready to handle by the time the chickens are finished. I add all the bits first: beak and eyebrow, feet, wing-tips, tail. When it's time to make cuts, I again use specialty tools: a home-made circle cutter that makes a hole that shrinks down perfectly to fit a number ten rubber stopper.

I also get out my dip-pen hole cutter to drill two small holes on the back of the head, which will be connected by knife cuts to form a neat, round-ended coin slot.

Once all the bits and bobs are attached, and the colored porcelain eyes, combs and wattles joined, I leave them uncovered to continue drying while I assemble the pigs.

It takes a solid two days work to make two dozen banks. Fortunately, I don't have to make them all that often.

Paste papers, too

A little video of the process that I made for Instagram.

Meandering

Our book arts group assignment for March is to make a Meander book. It's a technique wherein a single sheet of paper is folded and cut to make a continuous series of pages. You can do a number of different patterns, but the simplest is explained by Denise in her demo, here.





The theme for the book is "Water," so I decided to use some of the paste papers we made on Valentine's Day to create a little flow. After all, the original Meander was a river in Asia Minor. Here's "Spring Run."