USA Projects

Post-performance at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Jan 9. Note that the nib is not the brass-plated one, but a smaller-point model wedged into the holder with printed matter. Even at 40" x 60" the drawing was too small for the brass nib to be used alone.

Somehow I failed to include a picture of the completed cold-rolled steel, jeweler's saw-cut, hand-engraved, brass-plated nib. It makes a line that can be made to vary from 1/8" to 3/4 inch.

The Giant Pen had been tested in order to make sure it would work, but until this very day- Jan  9, 2011- it had not drawn a picture. Seattle's Gage Academy of Art generously agreed to host the Pen's coming out party and about 400 people showed up to absorb the spectacle.

A specially designed oversized drawing board was set up and fitted with  penciled drawings on  full sheets of Crescent...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W9N2EPPn7w

Here is the freshly sanded but not yet smoothed-and-polished nib in the hands of Conrad Fiederer, having its blowhole carved into the elegant design which will allow the tines to be more flexible by virtue of diminishing the amount of steel at the crucial bending point. The shape was carefully chosen to dovetail nicely with the design which is even now being hand-engraved onto the nib.

Prior...

At last the blank for the final version of the Giant Nib is in hand and ready to be brought to its ultimate, predestined state; and what a pai...what an adventure it's been to get this far!

I've had five of these things made, and this is the only one which is perfect. Nearly perfect, anyway. In order to make the tine lie straight and true the fabricators had to curve the steel in a series...

Fresh from the lathe, a solid, comfortably heftable body of poplar. Great handfeel, perfect balace, gorgeous lines... Christian at Seattle Stair turned the thing and got the contours absoultely perfect. It almost seems a pity to cover it with a skin of hard black lacquer, but it must be done. The nib seen here is an interim model... the final version is still being developed at Seattle sheet...

This is the drawing the lathe operator will use to turn the full-size penholder. It'll be made of poplar, six feet long, and  painted with several coats of black lacquer.