Outside Myself asked me if I would consider writing about the candle holder I made for her last summer in response to Will Someone Feed The Cat’s call for writings and other work focused on metal. Thank you, Angela, for suggesting this and thank you for asking me to make the candle holder for you in the first place. Making it, and writing this essay, has meant a great deal to me.

Happy birthday, sweetheart.

When I first started working with my forge and anvil, my thought was I should focus on the basics. Yet I was anxious to get right into making things; I wanted to express myself through this medium. Candle holders came to mind.

A little more than six months into my new-found hobby, something extraordinary happened. I met a wonderful woman and we quickly became friends as daily emails, a trickle at first, soon became a flood and we grew close. Thoughts expressed, ideas shared, an education given and received. As we talked and asked questions, told stories, laughed and cried, all via electrons finding their way from one coast to another and back again, the pieces of us we exchanged came to form mosaics of understanding we developed for each other. Love was blossoming.

One sweaty day in early August I was in the garage working on something and we had been emailing back and forth. Knowing that one of my “pieces” was that I liked making candle holders with a forge and anvil, she asked if I would share that part of me with her - would I make her a candle holder? Always charming and concerned about imposing, she offered to pay for the required materials and shipping. Being incredibly flattered that she would ask me to make her one of my crude artistic experiments, I was bemused by the thought of taking money for something I was only too happy to do. I told her I would be honored to make one for her, no charge.

As I thought about what shape it should take, I also thought about the things I knew about her. Something that stood out in my mind was that she loved lilies. I had discovered this one day when I snapped a picture of some lilies in my backyard and emailed it to her. “How did you know lilies were my favorite flower?” she asked. “I didn’t,” I typed, “but I do now.”

I decided I would make her a lily candle holder and sketched out some flowers on the end of a narrow stem. After some stops and starts, the design was such that there would be 4 flowers surrounding a central dish for the candle. And something else about this woman that I knew well: she likes swirl patterns. The stem I would somehow make “swirly”.  I wasn’t sure how I would go about this but I was determined to try. With that, I had the basic design; all other aspects of it would be generated in my head as progress on the primary elements occurred.

As I immersed myself in the project, I found that my thoughts were not just of what the next bend would be or how to get a particular twist just right, but of her and the effect she was having on me. Watching the steel go from cold, dark gray to hot, glowing orange, pulling it out to work it and then repeating that process over and over, I pondered the process of change occurring within me as a result of this amazing woman’s presence in my life. Clamping one end of a brightly glowing steel rod onto a cylindrical hardie tool affixed the anvil and twisting it around to form a flower’s curly stem, I thought about the grace with which she had alighted herself into my heart and so wanted the work I was doing to reflect the delicate passion I felt for her. To borrow from what I wrote to her later, the straight, separate components of which the candle holder is composed have softened, intertwined and melted together, solidifying into a single entity...

The work continued. Different sizes of both hot and cold rolled round steel stock for each component were used. Eighth inch diameter for the flower petals, quarter inch for the base, three-sixteenths inch for the braided stem. Heat, bend, heat bend, heat twist, heat, twist, quench. As the steam rose the pieces took shape – the large, loosely braided central leader with curly flower stems, the petals of the flowers, and the circle within a circle for a heavy base and low center of gravity. I tightly braided 4 strands of eighth inch diameter stock for the stem holding the candle dish and cut a disk a little over three inches in diameter from sheet steel for the dish itself. That was heated and pounded in a round concave swage with a ball-pein hammer to form a shallow bowl for catching the dripping wax. I located a small spike at its center for keeping the candle in place.

The components complete, the pieces were then welded together; a balancing act requiring that the pieces be clamped just so. There was not a straight section of metal on the thing so sometimes there was no way to clamp the pieces together other than to simply hold one against the other with my gloved left hand as I welded with the right hand. The two piece base welded together then welded to the central stem, flower petals welded to curly stem ends, dish welded into the center. And so on. After each major weld the candle holder got a turn with one of the grinders to remove the slag and to clean and smooth the joints.

At last it was together and ready for a final smoothing with the small hand grinder. I then used a wire wheel to remove any surface rust and burs that had formed. After which it was immersed in a bath in muriatic acid to remove greases and oils, allowing the paint to better adhere on the metal. A coat of primer then several coats of satin black paint later and it was finished. After a day of curing, it was ready to make the trip across the country.

Finally it was ready to go to its intended. When it came time to pack the candle holder up, I was very excited and the process of packing it up was emotional. So much thought and effort represented here as I held it in my hands!  I had been jotting thoughts down on scraps of paper as the project had progressed and so I put them together in a letter.

Here is a passage from my note to her: When steel is heated there is a dichotomy at work. The metal softens as its molecular particles spin faster and faster and the steel becomes pliable; ready to be shaped in ways only limited by one’s tools and imagination [I should have added skill here, too]. And it is literally red hot, having the potential to be dangerous and destructive if not handled properly. With knowledge, wisdom, respect and close attention to detail, the hot, molten tempest can be carefully molded into something beautiful.

One hoped she would find it beautiful for the metaphor to make sense.

I sent it on its way and two days later it arrived on her doorstep. That evening as I waited outside my daughter’s karate class, the email came through on my Blackberry: “It's here!!!  It's here!!!  It's here!!!”

She loved it. To say that I was gratified by the letter she wrote to me after receiving my gift would be an extreme understatement. She shared with me how she felt and she didn’t hold back. Her emotions found a home in me and I cherished them. I won’t speak for her, but I don’t think she’d mind if I include here a short passage from her letter describing her impressions of the candleholder that she now held in her hands:  I never, in my wildest dreams, would have thought of this gorgeous, elegant design!!! It's so graceful and yet so solid.  The details of the stamens on the flowers and the way the sweeping petals curve out and together and up and slightly over; the way the stems gently swirl to meet the lovely swirls on the base; the beautiful intertwining of the solid part of the base going down...so reminding me of how our lives and love have intermingled; and the beautiful leaves whispering upward....my goodness, Barry, it is so filled with artistry and emotion, I know exactly why you have been describing yourself as just feeling the design come together within your imagination and through your fingers. It is pure love. Every inch of it speaks of intensity yet gracefulness.  

Wow. Imagine being me and reading that.

From her request of me to make her a candle holder to the day the box containing it arrived at her house, we went from feeling the first blushes of new love to an intense passion for each other and a strong desire to build something great for ourselves together. We both think of the candle holder not so much as an object that is now completed but as a journey; the start of one that we are on together and one during which we have both learned and will continue to learn about each other and to grow closer. That may seem like a lot of responsibility to heap onto a couple pounds of bent steel. I don’t think so. As is often the case in life, the old saw rings true: the joy is in the journey, not just the destination.

Before paint, on the east coast

After paint, still on the east coast

~xoxoxo~