New Neckpiece

A new neck piece, suitable for either gender, assembled from:

• A child's playset cookie tray from the turn of the century, with peeling, chippy green paint,

• An open box made from recycled tin, bolted to the little tray, collaged with a face cut from sheet music of 1913, a watchmaker's vial, and encaustic medium,

• A scrap of leather and text from a 1860s novel,

• A polymer clay bead masquerading as a Warring States bead, sold to me as imported glass paste contemporary made in Iran, by a dishonest shopkeeper in Seattle. But it's still cute.

The steel bead chain and copper eyelets complete an industrial, but rustic look.

On the back, to cusion the bolts that were finished as rivets (because, drat, they  were my last two and the nuts that would fit them are disappeared), I papered over with a classic face, either Plato or Socrates (I don't think they would mind the confusion), from an old magazine from Uruguay (from Fanciful Devices, of course).

There may be a story here about what is real, true or genuine, a discourse between Plato and Socrates, but I simply enjoy the way it looks.

The chain is quite long; the assembly slips on over the head and hangs just above the waist.

All these parts hung around my studio for years and somehow introduced themselves to each other  only after being neighbors for a long time.

I love wearing things like this, and may just keep it for myself.

It'll remind me not to get taken in by dishonest bead salesmen, although that is getting more and more unlikely as I get more experienced. That bead was made before I even knew what polymer clay was. I don't really mind having the bead, but it wasn't priced fairly. Well, Plato and Socrates both might advise not to get taken in by illusion.