Copper Tabletop Peace Pole
Click Photos to Enlarge
Tabletop
peace poles are a good place to experiment because it is less expensive to do
that on this scale. These are expensive materials. There isn't enough money in
peace poles to throw away much of the materials with experiments.
Part of the experiment this time was these tops that have an organic feel produced by pushing molten copper roughly into shape. I didn't know if anyone but me would like that. It turned out that people like it a lot. So I will make a few more of these, but they would need to cost considerably more than I'm charging for me to keep making them after that, mainly because producing this patina takes so much time. But I am making a few more because I am considering it part of research and development as I pursue how to make something exquisite that is affordable.
This copper tabletop peace pole is 13.5 inches tall and an
inch and a half in diameter. Its base is 3.75 inches in diameter. It comes with
these ten translations of the word Peace: English, French, Spanish, Chinese,
Russian, Hebrew, Swahili, Cherokee, Hindi, Arabic. If you want different
translations, it will be a different price because, by the time you read this, I
probably already will have made the last ones of these I expect to make and will
have moved on to other projects.
Tabletop Peace Pole
Pole with 10 translations .... $250
Shipping ............................ $25
Total ................................. $275.00
Questions or orders: Email or call 513-348-4744.
It is weatherproof, but it would not be difficult for a wind to blow it over. If you plan to put it outdoors, let me know and either I'll give you a stake to drive into the ground on which to set this, or I'll rivet it to a wider base (similar to a coaster for a drink, but bigger) that will make it less likely to blow over if, say, set on a table.
Thought
This could be made less expensively, I suppose, if I bought a piece of copper pipe (greatly lacking in character compared to this) and bought a preformed copper saucer for the base (same problem), and bought a commercial patina product (which produces the patina you see at craft fairs and the sight of it makes me ill, but it is fast and cheap), and then applied black text over that with a felt tip pen. Someone doing that probably could sell these for $35, if their shop space and time were free, like if it were a hobby they do in the basement on weekends and they hope only to break even. A lot of what you see at craft fairs is people trying to break even on hobbies.
I do not intend that to sound like a rant. I have nothing against craft fairs and the work seen at them. I merely want to distinguish between that and this. This is a place where I experiment. So you'll find work here that might be beyond what makes its way to larger peace poles. For instance, in the fall of 2011, time permitting, I might experiment with casting a tabletop peace pole, possibly out of bronze. That is "casting" as opposed to "forming." Casting is more expensive. It potentially could cost a couple of thousand dollars. Although I have an etched, formed steel concept in mind that would be less expensive that I might pursue first.
One of the problems with experimenting on a small scale is that discoveries do not always work on a larger scale. The method used for creating the top of this TableTop Peace Pole did not work on a larger scale. So I'm trying a different menthod forthe larger scale that is resulting in throwing away lots of copper. Oh, well.
