My latest project was a Court Baroness coronet for my good
friend Mistress Ysabeau Tiercelin (now Baroness). As I have said before I am
not much of an artist so settling on the cosmetic aspects of this project was a
challenge for me. I went back and forth on design, the basic pattern, and color
scheme for a while (too long given the tight deadline) and finally came up with
this. The main coronet is very basic (I think maybe too basic in hindsight) and
the primary feature is the tooled personal heraldry on the front.
The tooling is some of the smallest detailed tooling I have
done to date (the Horse is about an inch tall) and I was very happy with it. I
was almost sad I had to paint it but I did like the “pop” the color gave the
finished project. The paint job was not my best. A few spots of the white
primer are peeking out here and there and some of the paint is thicker than I
like. It is hard to notice in person but it will forever haunt my nightmares. It was a tight deadline and I should have
spent less time debating on the design and more time painting.
I had another plan for mounting The “Pearls” on the top but
I was concerned about durability with an untested method so I went with
something I could trust on a mechanical level. Each Pearl is mounted to the
inside of the coronet on a stainless steel pin. I turned the end of each pin
over to for a hook that was then sunk into the leather. Over each pin I glued a
soft leather tab to cover the pin cosmetically and to firmly anchor the pin and
pearl in place.
As with most projects it was a learning experience and given
the chance I would do several things differently but the project seemed well
received.
Thanks for looking!
