Moths
I adore bugs, including moths.
I make a small collection of designs based on Luna moths at least once a year, scroll further down to see some of them, as well as some pillbugs.
Whenever I use real bugs for casting, they have always died of natural causes, I never kill anything for my art.
The casting process burns up all the organic matter completely, and replaces it with metal.
It’s called “lost wax casting”, and is not the same as electroplating, which keeps the organic matter intact and adds a thin layer of metal over it.
Lost wax casting creates a piece of metal that is solid all the way through.
One day, as I was making my morning coffee, I found a dead moth on my kitchen counter.
I took it with me into the workshop and sketched a design based on it, and made these two pendants inspired by it.
One is a young moth, with full scrollwork antennae and intact wings, and a white opal. The other is an old moth, decaying, with broken antennae and tattered wings. It's opal is black.
Both of them have a subtle oxidized pattern on their wings, just like the real moth had.
