Fern Curl as Inspiration & Ingredient

The elegant fern curl – every spring here in my garden the graceful unfurling of the new ferns begin.  They start as a tight spiral close to the ground and slowly uncurl before spreading into a leafy frond.  I only have a small collection (so far) as my shade garden is limited: I have two varieties of Japanese painted fern, a maidenhair fern and a hardy common variety that you see everywhere here along shady roadsides. Continue reading “Fern Curl as Inspiration & Ingredient”

Zaffiro takes the torch outside

Contrary to what you might think, Jack and I do not spend all our creative time huddled over jewelry projects, myopically focused on items that measure less than 10 millimeters in length. Occasionally we gotta work big.  Really big.  And that means taking the torch outside.

This project was one of the final extensions of a copper trellis system that we began back in 2004.  The first part was a horizontal support system underneath the eaves that ran across the entire south and east sides of the porch and two decorative vertical sculptural trellises on two of the pillars for a wistaria vine.  As the wistaria grew (and grew and grew and grew) we realized we needed to extend the supports around to the west side of the house where we could then add a climbing rose bush trellis designed to fit into the space between the eaves and the top of porch railing. Continue reading “Zaffiro takes the torch outside”