Order of the Laurel May 2016

I received a special request to do an "Order of the Laurel" for a person who specifically asked for me to do her scroll.  I was very honored to do this piece.  She got her Laurel for calligraphy.

I knew that my design was going to have a 'quill" and because she does book binding also...it was going to have to have a "book" of some sort.


Since I needed to include her heraldry on this scroll...I decided that the book would be half the words to her scroll and half would be her heraldry.  Below is the design/cartoon

I decided to do the scroll in 2 halves as the top has many pieces to put together.

First I did the quill

 Then I proceeded to build the Laurel leaves around it  - the leaves are incredibly time consuming and at times highly irritating when they won't "behave"!!!

Once the main part of the top was put together it was time to do the "book". This proved to be harder than I had anticipated.  My concept was to have half as her heraldry - 4 bunnies, and the other the half of the book be the works to the scroll.  Unfortunately, and I am not sure why,  those two pieces broke several times in the kiln before I was actually able to get a piece to come out good.  Broken and good pieces below:

I did finally get two fused pieces that did not break and proceeded to get the scroll put together. Not sure why but I can not get this picture to be vertical..sorry It shows the piece put together but not soldered

 The next photo shows the  piece soldered

 Then it gets cemented and Patina'd.  The patina gives it a black tone color on the lead

And then framed: