Salado

Every medium has its own character. Not all media are equally docile in the craftsman’s hands. Metal, in particular, is pretty high-maintenance. Unless you are an accomplished master of the metalworking craft with all processes at your fingertips, and your own, profoundly personalized work methods, the brass will never reveal its secrets nor go along with the craftsman’s effort to create a novel and original piece of work.

The Salado surface finish is the product of a full mutual trust between the craftsman and the metal. It seems that the two communicate without words on some psychic level: the craftsman’s hands are sensitive to every minutest change in the metal’s mood, and the metal, for its part, surrenders itself trustingly to those hands. Had this not been so, how would a finish texture have been possible that can enfold a convex surface like a piece of smooth, silky fabric with loose folds, pulled tightly over the semispherical surface, yet hanging down loosely over the edges of the surface? How would it have been possible to convey the fabric’s gentle grayish-pink hue with coppery filaments at the rims? And create all this, as it were, in the same breath…

Behind this make-believe lightness and easy naturalness looms a huge amount of painstaking work, executed with supreme skill and technological excellence.