If you've wondered how metal cookware is made - and I honestly hadn't, till now! - have a look at this short video about "metal spinning". The music is rather annoying, but some useful information is given - almost all metals can be spun, but aluminium and steel are best; there are tools for the automated lathe, and others for the hand lathe; it took 4 minutes to make the big pot (but no mention of how long it took to make the heap of cake tins and sausage funnels).
Copper is treated somewhat differently . "The tooling itself is a two man job" - one man to apply the pressure, the other man to go back and forth on the work. It does seem to take a lot of strength.... very macho....
Amazing tools, very polished, so as not to scratch the pans. Fascinating, I thought!
And here's the Alessi bird kettle, which "paved the way for the American design style of the 1990s". Seems to be almost an ad for the company! Interesting that they had a competition - among architects - to design a unique tea/coffee service. The winner went on to design the best-selling kettle - 50,000 of them are made every year, even now.
This shorter video is about the manufacture - no history, no talking heads - and shows the Tea Rex kettle
Some of us met at the Guildhall Art Gallery, with its permanent collection and an exhibition, till 23 December, about Noel Coward.
From Ann - A jug pic!
From Najlaa - Ewer and Basin /Koryo Dynasty 12 th century. From the web site of Brunei Gallery.
Richard - Ducked out of the Guildhall trip - stayed at home for some work. Nonetheless could not resist a go at pots and pans; very po-faced but enjoyable exercise to practice watercolour.
From Judith - View from Guildhall drawn with very water soluble pen.
From Sue K - ‘Three Nifty Nats’ 1926 after a painting by Gluck to promote ‘On with the Dance’. Done whilst listening to a lovely medley of his songs.
From Jo - From the Guildhall Gallery: this is a very inadequate attempt at Lucy Jones's The Thames 1982. I found I didn't have a turquoise pencil with me and its not a colour you can 'fake' from primary colours - as I discovered.
And this is a shot at a John Virtue landscape 2003-2004. One black pencil!
From Carol - Found in an antique shop – does anyone know what this is - samovar? ewer? pitcher? from the east? It was only about 10 inches high so not sure if it was a full sized version.
From Gill - A quick memory drawing of my pots and pans.
They have all been packed away while work is being done in my kitchen.
From Janet K - Madame Arcati. I chose this costume because there was a bench nearby and a film about Noel Coward's houses with Coward singing. A lovely way to spend the morning.
From Janet B - My first "live" drawing in a long, long time. Noel Coward’s chair. 2B pencil and no rubbing out.
From me - Some items from the Noel Coward exhibition -
and a colloquium of kettles -
