Tag: blacksmith poppy

Following on from stage 1 of my poppy sculpture project, the second stage of making the poppy sculpture was making the most important part, the poppy flowers.

I started by taking lots and lots of photographs through the summer months. The first thing that became very obvious was the amazing range of poppies to chose from. In the end I took a slightly artistic view of the classic 4 petal red poppy.

I then decided to show the flowers in 3 key stages, the developing bud, the fully open flower and finally the classic seed head.

Dealing with these in order, we of course start with the bud. This was made by first welding a piece of bar onto a smaller bar, the bud and the stem.

 

 

 

 

Next I forged the shape of the bud, including a fold in the side to represent the unwrapping bud.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally the stem was hammered and rounded to make it look less like a piece of bent rod. 3 of these were needed, at differing heights,  for the final sculpture.

That was about it, first stage of the flowers complete

 

This week saw my mum’s 80th birthday, and with it a gathering of friends and family.

At the recent Malvern Autumn show we met a wonderful poet, Erin Bolens. 

She was there as a part of a Poetry Takeaway event, where you give the poet some interesting facts about a person and then return later in the day to collect the poem.

It was a wonderful poem, which I read out at the party as a part of the toast, as in the main picture above.

It was also the official unveiling day for the poppy sculpture.

I will do another post showing the process of making the sculpture over the last few months, but here it is in its finished form. We delivered and assembled it a day early to make sure it was all OK.