There's No Tool Like an Old Tool

Work In Progress - FALLING TO PIECES IN VERMONT from the Vermont Place Settings Series - Pique Assiette mosaic from recycled dishware on "green" MDF board. Some of the tesserae (grass and tree leaves) have been cut, placed and glued. Still needs to be finished, grouted, sealed and framed.

I have a life long love affair with tools and technology. I grow truly excited by any and all contraptions — large and small, simple and complex, old and new, fancy or mundane — that promise to do something, (anything really!) that will make my work better, my day easier or my life simpler. And while I do find myself instantly attracted to tools and technology out of hope that they will deliver on the promises they make, honestly, I’m into them for the novelty, the curiosity and the wonder of it all.













A Few Good Tools - Cutting (rather than breaking) old dishes into tesserae requires (from right to left) gloves, goggles, tile nippers, my favorite leponittes and p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e. (Wearing shoes is always good, too!)

Whether it’s old tools at garage sales and flea markets that perform some function no longer a priority in today’s society, or old technology discovered in the back rooms of thrift stores and found discarded at the dumps because it has been replaced by something a million times faster, or the very newest, latest and hottest techno-tool trends, I want it — or at least the chance to play with it.

I find the tools and technology beautiful to behold, fascinating to contemplate and wondrous to feel in my hands. I not only want to own them all, I want to use them all; try them out, stretch their boundaries, take them apart and see how they work — then leave my husband to put the peices back together again... I derive hours of entertainment and frustration from this preoccupation because the reality is, that as fascinating as new technology is, I really do quite well with my work, and usually in my life, with what I already have — a few very simple tools that work remarkably well and some moderately current technology that, as it tends to find some balance point between causing me utter frustration and providing me with complete bliss, I continue to use rather than replace.

What I have always known about my work, regardless of the latest techno trends, is that my most useful tools are my hands. Simple, (and rather small in my case!), multi-jointed, five-fingered hands with clever little opposable thumbs and calluses tough enough to stop a leponitte blade. It’s true my hands are growing ever so slightly clumsier as I age, and lately I have noticed they are occasionally sore in the mornings after I’ve spent the previous day cutting up tiles and tesserae. However, they are the most amazing and fascinating piece of technology I have access to, as well as my most valued, most favored and most often used tool — and one look at them will prove it!


WORK IN PROGRESS - (detail) FALLING TO PIECES IN VERMONT from the Vermont Place Settings Series

Despite the fact that I have several pair of work gloves, various nippers, tweezers, probes, sponges, scrapers, etc. , and that I do actually understand all the safety ramifications, when it comes to getting my work just the way I want it, I seem to need to feel my way. So, I strip off my gloves, set aside the nippers, tweezers, probes and files, drop the sponges and dig right in with bare hands and naked fingers. This is, of course, why my hands look like they’ve been through several medieval wars. They are covered in scars, often full of glass chips (it’s hard to feel them with all those calluses) and the nail beds are perpetually stained by whatever color of grout I used on my last project. The point is, I have the tools, the technology and (presumably) the intelligence to use them safely, but I just don’t. I like the feel of my fingers on my art work and to me it's just not my art without that part.

Breaking Points & Exploding Plates

Everything (and, everyone!) has a breaking point. As a mosaicist who cuts my own tiles and tesserae, I am constantly reminded of this. Sometimes I reach MY breaking point before I locate the best "breaking point" of the materials I am trying to cut.



RHAPSODEEP IN BLUE from the Fish Hook Series - showing various tesserae made from dishware and mirror, some of which was broken and some which was hand cut.

For tiles and tesserae, the "breaking point" can refer to either the pressure required to cut, nip or break the material OR to the exact point on the material (such as the edge of a plate or center of a tile) where, when the correct pressure is applied, the material breaks along the lines the cutter intends it
to. With these types of materials, a silly little millimeter or fraction of a ppsi or even a flick of the wrist, can make all the difference.

There are times when cuts just go well. You get the feel for the material, you find the right rhythm, you know exactly where the sweet spots are and how much pressure they need, and maybe you have newly sharpened wheels on your Leponitt (a cutting tool, somewhat similar to scissors, but which uses two opposing razor sharp wheels instead of blades), or perhaps you just get plain lucky and it all feels g-r-e-a-t.


The ever useful Leponitt!

The more cutting I do, the better able I am to evaluate materials that come my way so that while it is always something of an experimentation with those first few cuts on newly acquired materials, I usually have some feel for what to expect from past experience with all the different substances I have used. However, the fact that I use old, recycled, salvaged and damaged materials for most of my work, provides an added dimension to the "breaking point" game.

Like the exploding plate I encountered last week. It didn't break, crack, chip or crumble when I applied my Leponitt. It EXPLODED. Yes, really exploded! The minute I put the Leponitt wheels to it, this lovely little black saucer I found at the dump exploded (with a sudden, soft sigh) into thousands of micro-sized shards that flew several feet into the air and then cascaded throughout the studio like sharp bits of ash. I've made plenty of bad cuts, but I have never actually exploded anything before — which leaves me wondering what that saucer was made of and what had happened in its life for it to have that kind of "breaking point"!

PURPLE PASSION FISH from the Fish Hook Series - showing tesserae of stained glass, tile and dishware that was all hand cut (not broken)

The problems inherent in trying to cut, nip, break or grind, old, weathered, chipped, cracked and broken materials into exact tesserae, identically proportioned tiles and accurate shapes, has, along with the fact that I recently celebrated a "milestone" birthday, gotten me to thinking. And thinking too much can be hazardous to someone brandishing a newly sharpened pair of Lepponittes...

I admit that the “used” nature of these recycled resources often makes them quite difficult to work with because no matter how carefully I make my cuts, the salvaged materials have a tendency to break along old stress points, crumble in weathered portions and shatter along invisible (to me, anyway) time-worn fracture lines that defy my best intentions. But, while this is sometimes frustrating (and it certainly makes the process more time consuming) it does make every cut, score, nip and snap an adventure into the unknown -- sometimes to the point that where I started out thinking I was going with a creation is not where I end up due to the unpredictable nature of "vintage" materials.

BAHAMA BLUSH from the Fish Hook Series - Tesserae hand cut from vintage china, dishware vitreous glass and drinking glasses.

As much as I might be loathe to admit it, there are certain parallels here to my own life as I notice my body, and those of family and friends, begin to weather and age. The key, I have decided, is to adapt and enjoy the places that I end up, even if they are not what I thought I had in mind when I started this journey. After all, I am a creation in the making and the challenge of knowing how to make the best of those critical "breaking points" and still enjoy the "sweet spots", is part of the art of living — and giving old materials new life is infinitely rewarding.



RUBY TWO FINS from the Fish Hook Series - tesserae hand cut from china, fiesta ware and vitreous glass tile.