Thato Radebe: May 2015

In order to take my designing to a higher more complex level I had to incorporate layering into my work. I've been focusing on nature, more specifically feathers. I decided to work with the peacock feather.

INSPIRATION

The peacock feather seemed like a good choice because the layers did not only begin an end with the physical arrangement of the feathers but the colours on the feathers are also layered.

REFERENCE DRAWINGS

Reference drawings of birds and feathers. I was drawn to the form of the feathers and thought it would make for interesting jewellery.

I did some drawing exercises of some feathers so I could loosen my hand and gain confidence in my ability to draw feathers.

RING

I Pierced out the frame and added the sawn out jump rings with granules. These represent the head of the feather/attracting feature of the peacock feather.

The focus of this piece is the 'eye' of the peacock feather.

I made the wire structure that fits inside the sawn out outer frame. After soldering the wire structure I domed the entire frame.

To add another element of layering I made a woven strand with a combination of silver and copper.

The backplate that was pierced to match the domed top plate that was shown above.

I arranged the woven pattern to fill up the back plate as seen above

I soldered the domed frame from earlier onto the backplate with the weaving. As can be seen, the domed plate subtly hides the weaving on the backplate.

The ring has a knife edge shank so I made it by melting the ends of a strip of metal then gammering the melted ends as flat as you want the knife edge then removing the excess so you can solder the ends together. (Hargreaves, 2013)

I split the shank at the top of the shank as a decorative element

The complete ring after all the elements have been soldered together

The final product

RING STAND

I used square wire to create the base of the stand. I used the same structure as the protea ring I made earlier

I bent the side frames as oranically as possible also making sure the ring would sit comfortably as possible.

The stand needed some visual weight so I made some components that are meant to resemble the "eye" of a peacock feather

I soldered the elements together and arranged them in a way that I will solder them on the rest of the stand

The ring stand after the elements were added onto it.

Top View

Side view

CAD Process

The following series of images shows the steps followed in CAD leading up to the final rendered product.

I used curves to draw the outline of the top of the ring. I used an arrangement of ellipses and then trimmed what was necessary

From the curves that were left over after extruding, I started to build

the inner frame.

I polar arrayed the initial solids that I created 8 times.

Perspective view so far.

Using the same curves that built that top of the frame, I created the bottom of the frame. I obviously did not boolean difference the middle out.

I created the ring shank with a slip feature on top. I used the 2 sweep rail tool to create the taper.

I created the weaving by drawing lines that I edited using control points. I made 2 vertical lines and 2 horizontal lines. The reason for creating 2 is because I can easily copy the rest.

I changed the layer colours to resemble the materials used. I bent the woven strip and arranged the multiple copies of the strip on the inside of the frame.

I covered it up as it should be and this is what the complete ring looks like

To create the stand, I drew the shape of one side of the frame using the arc tool and offsetting it inwards by 1.5mm. I drew the base of the stand using the circle tool and offsetting it by 1.5mm.

I extruded the curve I created above, bent it slightly so it resembles the actual piece then I polar arrayed it 3 times around the base .

To create the "eye" of the peacock feather I drew 2 circles and placed one circle on top of the other. I trimmed the parts that aren't needed so that I could extrude the curve.

I extruded the curve and created 2 solid spherical solids that I placed on the extruded curve. The spherical solids represent the "eye" of the peacock feather. I polar arrayed it 3 times around the base.