The naming of things

This post is mostly whimsy. If you have ten minutes to spend you might want to follow the links. If not then just read on.

Today we have Naming of Parts  (very good: worth a read)
Specifically I have a piece of jewellery to name.
This is not as easy as it used to be when I supplied shops and galleries. RS5G seemed to work well enough (It’s one of these by the way). These days, though, I have to be more creative; few of us call our kids, ‘Child A’ and ‘Child B’, although the system has much to recommend it.

I remember hearing a list of the most unusual American names. Each was more jaw-dropping than the last.  Of a list of ten, all I can remember now are ‘Cigarette’, ‘Satan’ and (brace yourself)  ‘Nicey-Horsey’

I regret the fact that I missed the chance to call one of my own children ‘Spatula’. (Is that a boy’s name or a girl’s? I tend towards girl). At the time I just cared too much about what other people think.  Always a mistake.

One person who cared less was Frank Zappa. he named his children Dweezil and Moon Unit. (Why Dweezil? Well it was Frank’s pet name for the oddly curled pinky toe of his partner Gail.) However, the hospital where Dweezil was born refused to register him under that name and so his parents called him Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa instead. When he was older ‘Ian’ discovered that his real given name was Dweezil and he insisted on it becoming his legal name.
Read all about it:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dweezil_Zappa

Today though, I have to name this baby:

It’s a lovely organic, 18ct gold and diamond pendant, but what to call it? Is it a leaf, (someone suggested a bit of sea weed). Diamond leaf? Organic leaf?
It’s not really the sort of thing that I generally make. I’d like to claim that the concept was conceived during an evocative walk through an Autumn forest. “I draw my inspiration from the natural world and my love of all things living.” You know the sort of thing.

Well actually it was like this: I made a graphite ingot mould so that I could cast large section gold bar to turn old gold into bangles. It has a conical lip to catch the molten metal and direct it into the aperture.  This bit of gold was left clinging on the lip when I poured and it solidified into a lovely crinkly texture as it cooled. The addition of a bale and diamond was all that was needed to get it to its finished state.

Very lucky really; it could have just been an amorphous blob. As such, I think that ‘Serendipity Leaf’ would be a good name although I’m very happy to take other suggestions in the comments section below. I’ll be putting it on the web site later in the week so don’t dally.

… although something in me really wants to call it Spatula.

 

(If you like the pendant, you can buy it here )