When a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa it is the begining of a hurricane in Florida. Something like that happened with my Jewelry class in Florence. An instructor I have used for years was suddenly on her way to Florida to take care of family busness through no fault of hers and she worked very hard to get alternative instruction for me and all went very smoothly.
My substitute instructor was in touch with me by email and cell putting a class together that was in her skill set and would be interesting to me. She hit a home run.
Meet Valentina. Her specialty is Italian Filigree. There are very few artist who keep this art form alive and Valentina is one of them. As you will see Italian Filigree is a young persons sport. My failing eyesight, shaking hands and fat fingers are exactly why I should not be doing this. I spent 2 full days with Valentina and I was wornout at the end of both days but accomplished a lot of work with her help.
I still have a lot of work to just understand the possibilities and I am looking foward to learning more.
I will try to quickly explain what the process is without boring you. Filigree is the art of creating structure and then inserting into the structure elements or shapes that have compression built into their design so outward pressure from the elements push up against the structure and holds the element in place. There is then a soldering process I had never heard of before but will be a big help in other projects separate from filigree work.
Above are samples of elements that have been used for hundreds of years and as you can see all have open space built into thier design to create outward pressure.
and now you can see the fitting of the element into the structure.
After 2 days the finished project. There is still lots to learn but I thoroughly enjoyed the class.
Valentina reluctantly gave me a break for lunch and as I dug in I noticed once again yet another resraurant was serving soup with the proper spoon. It was a tuscan bean soup.
I am about to horrify some of you but some of you will be in the kitchen before I finish typing trying to figure this one out. Monday night I was at a restaurant in the North East part of town. I am not sure I have seen Foie Gras on a menu in Florence before but I am glad I stumble across this.
Foie Gras pan fried in a Porcini and olive oil sauce with a citrus glaze on top and served on a baked pizza dough.
Off to bed!!