November Courses in the Forge

I have had  a couple of really good days teaching this week getting the chance to 'play' in the forge myself is always a pleasure.  Monday saw me demonstrating how to split and fire weld to creat a dragon head on 12mm square bar.  I love the chance to do some creative punch work on forged animal heads.
I had Laurie Plant here for a day on Thursday, fresh from finishing his 35' mural and with a lovely selection of charcoal drawings and a large scale painting in the workshop as inspiration for his uber-wiggly poker!
I love a challenge and this was it working with two sections to create a double twisted handle that also had a pentagon shaped centre.  Making the two piece separately with lovely long tapers was a good morning's work for Laurie who was forging for the first time.  Fitting the two piece together was slightly more difficult and tested my powers of deduction!  We finally got there and wrapped the longest length loosely around the main stem, fire-welding the ends together to finish it off.
We did remember to remove the lovely canvas painting before fire welding!
Fellow student on Thursday Mike worked on some fine forged letters for fixing to a piece of oak.  Getting good traditional skills under his belt he then went on to forge another hook with no intervention form me which is a great way to send your first day in the forge.
Its always good to finsih the day without getting the Miller Welder going!

I have more courses coming up next week when I return from a working visit to Germany and courses are being booked now for next January and February 2013
You can see images of work produced on these courses at;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/melissa_cole/sets/



Check out www.laurieplant.com

Marketing on a shoestring for artists

I will be talking about my experiences of marketing my work over the last 20 years at The Old Stables, Puthall Farm, Marlborough for Marlborough Open Studios on Thursday 13th December. Look at www.marlboroughopenstudios.co.uk or Contact me  if you want to attend!

Forging in the forest- winter 2012

Forest Forge Studio is glowing warm and cosy on these dull and dank winter days.  Bookings are being taken for the one day blacksmithing courses in the run up to the Christmas period and dates are now on www.melissacole.co.uk/courses for 2013.

I am off to Monchengladbach soon for a scouting mission regarding the possibility of a sculpture for the UK JHQ Base that is closing next year.