A Ming First: A Double Dynasty Set

This past weekend I decided to carve an Incubus and Predator from Simba.  I set the shapes out on adjoining parts of a sheet of Simba and set out to work.  As I carved, sanded and buffed the faux elephant ivory I realized that both of the tampers were headed to Dynasty and possibly Apex grade pieces.  When the dust settled I held in my hands two Dynasty tamps, and I mean strongly graded Dynasty pieces.  This is a Ming-Kahuna first.  My wish is that the two pieces are sold together as a pair, but they are also offered separately.

I have to apologize for the lousy photo.  The light stinks here in Atlanta as it rained all day.  The grain on the Simba is somewhat exagerrated and in person is much more subtle and fine, yet still very visible.

I’m thrilled to have made two such pieces, and side-by-side.  I had never considered the possibility that two such tampers created together would make the grade as they did.  I’m most pleased to offer them for acquisition, but, a part of me would love to mark them sold and just keep them, but that is a temptation that I must (and will) resist!

A thought for a Sunday…

 Never let the toils of tomorrow spoil the pleasures of today.

Happy 3rd Birthday Ming Destiny

Yesterday Ming Destiny turned three years old! On July 13, 2004, with an announcement on ASP, Ming Destiny formally kicked off with the offering of the first TouchStone, Mako in Caneel (seen above). The concept behind the art of Ming Destiny has been “art for art’s sake” as opposed to “art that works” for Ming-Kahuna, which is an artisan effort.  The pieces created for Destiny are generally not pipe related and are only sometimes functional, as opposed to strictly aesthetic.  TouchStones for example are small sculptures that can often be carried as pocket pieces, or displayed on a shelf, table or desk.  Some are pieces that can be fiddled with while on the phone. I’m a doodler so I appreciate something to keep my hands busy while on the phone.  Other pieces have been “full sized” sculptures, some of them based on tamper shapes.  Numerous sculptures have sold and a number of new commissions have recently been accepted. Before my move to Atlanta I was set to sell my work in a couple of galleries, but my move ended that.  The gallery’s commissions here in Metro Atlanta are so outrageously high (well in excess of 50%) that I will continue to sell my own work through the Ming-Kahuna site for TouchStones, and through word of mouth for my sculpture (and maybe at Ming-Kahuna in the future).

Two new functional items, one pipe related and one promising to be very popular with the women folk, both made from Caneel, are about to be announced. Destiny is ever growing offering an output for more unlimited artistic expression.

At any rate, Ming Destiny has allowed me to express my art in pieces that have no requirement as to fitting in a pipe bowl.  You’d be amazed at how much of a challenge the functional aspects of a tamper offer when creating a tamper.  If the tamper won’t fit, it ain’t worth spit.  As a tamper that is, but as a purely aesthetic piece it may have great value. 

So, Happy Birthday to Ming Destiny.  Those of you who visit the Ming-Kahuna site actually get to see only a tiny part of what’s going on with my art, but that may well change in the future.  I’ve kept Destiny out of the limelight, except on a very limited basis, but that is set to change.  

Another Face of Fu Manchu

(shown rough carved)

Back in the 60’ some deliciously evil movies were made in England, the Fu Manchu series, five films based on the Sax Rohmer stories.  Master criminal Fu Manchu was wonderfully played by Christopher Lee.  His nemesis, best played by Nigel Green, was Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard.  Fu Manchu’s daughter, Lin Tang, heightened the libidos of more than many young men, I can assure you of that.  If you recall these films you know what I’m talking about.  I’ll say no more, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

At any rate, the Fu Manchu movies were somewhat of a forbidden pleasure for me the better part of a lifetime ago, and I have often wanted to go back and watch them again, and this time uncut not as they were seen on local broadcast television.  They were much like Hammer films, period pieces set back in the 1920’s.  I do recall those movies having a pretty big impact on me, and it’s funny what ends up becoming part of your memories so many years later.  So, it was natural that Fu Manchu would inspire a tamper these many years later.

Sometime back I decided to make a tamper for a friend who lives on the West Coast.  With the circumstances surrounding the tamp I was free to make whatever I wanted, so I decided that it was time  to make the Fu Manchu. The idea was to create a tamp that featured the long twisted fingernail that is often associated with Fu Manchu.  Sometimes it was an actual nail, other times it was a metal nail that fit on the end of his finger, presumably poison tipped.  I knew that I wanted it to be in Caneel and be rather twisty.  If you could see the tamper above from the front you would see that it zigs and zags from side to side.  And while this is only the beginning for this shape, sure to evolve and shift over time, it captures what I wanted, suggesting the twisted evil of the master criminal.  A second shorter piece is already carved and ready for sanding.  I have shown this tamp rough carved as the shape of Caneel tamps usually shows up better photographically when rough.

It will be fun seeing where this new shape goes.  It will also be fun paying the film world of Fu Manchu another visit.   

As a rule, no rulers.

I do not have an aversion to precision.  No matter how much I look at what I do as art, I think that there needs to be an underlying precision upon which the art can be based.  For me using a lathe is too much precision that I strongly feel would absolutely end up destroying my style.  Like my avoidance of the lathe, I tend to shun any tool or technique that could constrain what I have come to do.

That said, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a precision measuring device such as a ruler.  In fact, I even have a dandy set of calipers.  You’ll not find those calipers in my shop.  They are right by the computer, where they belong, used for measuring the length of tampers for web page listings.  I may have a ruler in the shop right by one of my drill presses under a stack of sand paper, at least I’m pretty sure that’s where it is.  It seems to avoid me.

Okay, it was not always this way.  There was a time late last century, during the first handful of years of Ming-Kahuna, that I measured absolutely everything.  Everything that I did was dutifully measured, re-measured, and recorded in meticulous notes.  Those notes often were scribed directly onto the wood of my workbench or printed on cards, laminated for posterity, and hung on the workshop wall.  Much trial and error went into coming up with those measurements.  I feared nothing more than losing them.

Then, slowly over the past nine years, I found myself reaching for the ruler less and less.  Finally, one day not so long ago, I noticed that there hadn’t been a ruler in my shop for months.  As it turns out, after you’ve made thousands of tampers, the ruler becomes internal, part of the gray matter programing that runs in my head every time I look at a piece of raw material.  And while I think in terms of inches, on the rare occasion that I do measure, I use metric.  But, either way, if I want to make a tamper that is 3.75 inches long, I can pick up a piece of material and know exactly where to cut it, ending up no more than maybe 1/20th of an inch off.  For example, I know that my original design for the Pug called for the lower barrel material to be two and one eighth inches long and can make that exact length cut by eyeballing it, probably seven times out of ten.  At other times I’m not concerned about the exact length of a tamp and cut the length based solely on my vision of the final shape.  No matter how I do it one thing is clear: a ruler is useful in my shop more as a back-scratcher than anything else. 

Of course, as any artisan knows, calipers make the best back-scratchers.