Homotherium's jewellery debut!

As I've mentioned in previous post, I've been thinking about merging my passion for jewellery with my passion for palaeontology, and I did just that! The first palaeo-pieces are dedicated to Homotherium, and in particiular, to Homotherium latidens, an Eurasian species. 

For those who don't know much about that saber-toothed cat, let me write an introduction: Homotherium is a genus of machairodontidae family (one of several families, spread along three different biological taxa, of animals commonly referred to as saber-toothed cats), one that lived during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. It was a rather successful genus, ranging from both Americas, Eurasia and Africa, and existing for approximately 5 million years. Homotherium is sometimes referred to as a scimitar cat, or a scimitar-toothed cat: this is because it has a different, shorter type of canines than its better known cousins like, for example, Smilodon. Its canines also have serrated edges, and those probably helped with cutting through thick hide of the preferred prey.

You already saw that one, but introduction without a picture is no introduction!

Homotherium displays an array of adaptations to life in cold climates, and more cursorial lifestyle than typical for most cats. It had large nasal opening, which allowed it to breathe faster (by which I mean it was able to breathe in and out quite rapidly, and that's really important if you want to run fast, just ask any horse ;) helping with running and cooling the brain. It had also large and complex visual cortex, which suggest it was more diurnal rather than nocturnal like most other cats. Homotherium's limbs were proportionally long, and, interestingly, its forelegs were longer than its hind legs, giving it sloped, hyaena-like appearance. Feet on the back legs were also partially plantigrade, to allow a greater contact with substrate on which the animal walked, making it easier for it to move across the snow.

Apart from being adapted to a more cursorial, active lifestyle than most cats, it was also a big-game hunter. It's typically associated with higher altitudes, and most common in the North, alongside big prey animals such as mammoths and woolly rhinos. Some evidence suggests that it specialised in hunting juvenile mammoths. This in turn suggests that those cats probably hunted in prides, similar to modern day lions. Animals whose remains are found alongside those of Homotherium's would be very difficult for an individual cat to bring down. Homotherium was about the size of a modern male African lion.

It first became extinct in Africa (about 1.5 million years ago), than in Eurasia, with the youngest found remains estimated to being about 28 000 years old (though that may not be correct estimate) about the time when climate shifted, and forests became more dominant in the landscape. Homotherium was a cold steppe hunter, and the shift to more forested environment favoured prey it was not well equipped to hunt). The genus lasted longest in North America, until about 10 000 year ago. Evidence from South America is scant, with a few recorded fossils of 1.8 million year old H. venezuelensis. It's hard to tell how long the genus lasted there, but it certainly did partake in the Great American Interchange, alongside Smilodon. 

It also happens to be one of my favourite saberteeth (hope that's the correct plural;) 

And as for the jewellery:

There's a necklace:

I must say that it was fun to make it (and earrings as well). I wanted it to feature Homotherium specifically, and not just some generic sabertooth head. To make the image, I first found a picture of Homotherium's skull (and it was H. latidens to be exact), drew a grid on it, copied in on a piece of paper, then scaled it down, drew soft tissue on the skull, and then scaled the whole thing even more, so it would fit on the pendant. It was an interesting exercise. The rest was easy, and typical: adding scrolls to the design, making the chain, the bail, oxidising...

And while I'm writing about the skull: it's rather long, and the lower jaw has down-turned flanges, that helped to protect the canines. The skull has also a well-developed crest, and that means that these animals had a hell lot of muscles to power the lower jaw. 

The necklace is 50cm ( 10 4/16in) long, and the pendant is 3.2cm (1 4/16in) in diameter. 

I forgot to use polarizing filter. Oh, well...

 There are also earrings, as I've already mentioned:

The images of the heads here I made exactly the same way as on the pendant. I must say that fitting them on a 1cm wide strip of metal was fun... I also decided to solder a jump ring to each earring, instead of making a whole in them. And of course I ended with solder all over the place. And what is really irritating about that? I had a little dish with yellow ocher pastel powder at hand. I just forgot it was there. I will either get really good at soldering, and stop getting solder everywhere, or will invent some extremely effective way of getting rid of the stuff, or maybe I will actually develop some decent memory, and stop forgetting about things like using something to stop the solder from flowing where I don't want it to go... The second one from all of these is the most probable development ;P

I've also got a new lens, and I already like it much, much better than the old one.

While making the earrings, I decided to play with a saw a bit more than usual, to practice. I know, it's not a very intricate shape, but I'm happy with it, especially because I managed to cut each earring in one continuous loop. That's really good, considering my sawing skills... or lack thereof... I now actually have some hopes of developing decent sawing-capabilities. Not so long ago I would not believe it possible. Unthinkable: my saw started to cooperate with me ( or, more likely, I stopped stopping it from doing its work properly) ;) The earrings are 4.5cm (6 with ear wire) or approx 1.8in (~2.4in counting ear wire) long.

So, that's that. Necklace is available here, and earrings here. And I also got renaissance wax, and I'm going to see how it works. Right now I now only one thing: it stinks like shoe polish ;P I hope it was worth the price tough. 

Till the next time!

Kasia

PS. should someone like a print with Homotherium, or, I don't now, a mug or something, I'm on redbubble. And I sometimes actually upload something there... 
PS2. Sources! I forgot to list the sources I used, and now I'm embarrassed! So here we go:
Ascanio D. Rincón, Francisco J. Prevosti & Gilberto E. Parra "New saber-toothed cat records (Felidae: Machairodontinae) for the Pleistocene of Venezuela, and the Great American Biotic Interchange", Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 31 (2), pages 468-478, DOI:10.1080/02724634.2011.550366
http://www.wired.com/2010/11/facing-homotherium/
http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/h/homotherium.html

Torches, charcoal blocks, soldering boards, lockets in progress and a whole heaps of plans.

Right. I've been absent from the blog for over a month, I didn't show promised cuff pictures... bad blog owner! Bad! All because the first time in I don't know how many years I managed to catch a really, really nasty flu. Not only I felt downright miserable, and couldn't think straight for ridiculously long time, but it also knocked me off my feet (not in a good way), and getting myself back together took quite some time. 
After I finally got to the point where I was able to do anything other that laying in bed and feeling sorry for myself, I decided that I would like to try my hand at making lockets. So I designed one, cut the pieces, painted them, etched them, and when it came to soldering, I found out that my trusty lovely little blowtorch is... too small. And can't get the piece hot enough, so the solder was balling up, and generally not cooperating with me. The logical step was, of course, to get a bigger blowtorch. Which I did last weekend, though figuring out what torch I would like to buy took some time. The fact that the post will not deliver gas cans complicated matters a bit, because I had to buy something for which I can buy gas containers in brick and mortar store- it really is not that simple, as I live in a rather small town. At first I wanted gosystem torch, but my local hardware store doesn't carry their gas cans. It does, however, carry campingaz torches and gas cans, and this is what I got. I had two options, and actually bought the one I didn't intend to buy at first. But that one has piezo ignition, and I'm terribly jumpy around gas devices without automatic ignition system. And what a monster of a torch it is! Here, have a picture (with my little iroda for comparison):

By the way, my table is not that messy when I'm actually soldering something...

It runs, as you can see, on butane/propane mix, and reaches 1750 °C. And the flame is HUGE. But it soldered the joint I was battling with for more than a week at the first try, in few seconds. Good news is, you can buy replacement burners, and there is one particular model, called x1650, that gives you a fine flame, suited, as producer claims, for jewellery and model making. Bad news- it proved difficult to find, and virtually unavailable in the UK. I had to buy one from Germany, pay ridiculous price for postage, in effect paying for a burner about as much as for the torch itself. 

After I soldered the one joint, I decided that my magnesia block alone was no match for that monster, and I need to buy more adequate soldering surface. Apparently, a charcoal block can withstand up to 3000 °C, and I don't have anything that reaches temperatures anywhere near that mark, so I bought one. I also bought soldering board, to rest the charcoal block on, because the flame produced by that big torch is big itself, and produces quite a bit of heat, therefore I found the set up I was using with my butane torch not satisfying. I may be over-cautious here, but better safe than sorry. Oh, I also got a third hand while I was doing my shopping, because I really had no clue how to solder on the bail I designed for the locket, and in the place I designed for it, without something of that sort. I never used one before, but I hope it will work well for me. 

*I wrote the above yesterday, with intention of posting it today, and today morning my fine flame burner was delivered. I'm really happy with it: it can make a big flame, but also, contrary to the default burner the torch was supplied with, it can also make a really small one, which makes work a lot easier: the smallest flame of the default burner is still so big that I have problems seeing just what exactly is happening on the soldered piece. With that new burner, I can create wider range of flames, so it's way better suited to the type of work I use it for. It was totally worth all that rummaging through the internets and ordering from Germany.

Picture time!

There is not much outside difference between the two burners, but there is a big one performance-wise

My shiny, new, as yet unused charcoal block on top of my old, much used and abused, crumbly but loved, magnesia block:

 Charcoal block, soldering board, third hand, tweezers, beginning of a locket, and a really weird perspective:

And the beginning of a locket on my new charcoal block (I haven't used it yet, but I'm already awfully fond of it, can you tell?) :

Sorry, but you need to click on the picture to see it better. Why doesn't blogger have a decent gallery making options? Or is it just me?

 That's actually going to be the back of the finished piece. I'm planning red abalone cabochon on the front. Also, note the huge overspill of solder. That's all result of trying to solder this with my little torch. Once I applied the monster to it, it all decided that it can, in fact, flow, and there was what I can only describe as a solder flood. I just can't wait for all that sanding and cleaning it up....

I also have no idea if I'll manage to solder the hinge knuckles on properly... that remains to be seen. Honestly, that hinge terrifies me. I just hope I won't botch it entirely. On the side note, that wolf etching you see here is the first etching with nail polish as a resist I really like. I think I finally got the hang of using nail polish to achieve the effects I want.

I'm also thinking about writing a series of posts about recurring motifs in my designs - namely, wolves and ravens. I've written some "sketches", but I'm still not quite sure how to approach the subject. I know I'm going to start with wolves, but the piece I wrote on them needs a lot of polishing and finishing touches- I intend it to be something of an introduction to the species, but right now, I think, it's probably too technical, and possibly I'm writing about too many different aspects for just one post. I will have to do some hard thinking about it, as I wouldn't like to bore the living hell out of readers ;) What I know I want to do with that planned series, is to write about biological, ecological and cultural aspects of them. Thing is, for me by far the most interesting of these are ecology and biology, with cultural bringing up the rear, a loong, looong distance behind the former two, and I tend to get overexcited with technicalities and details. But the again, being wolf researcher and behaviourist is my unfulfilled childhood dream, so what would you expect ;)

Which brings me nicely to my other plans, though those are a bit nebulous at this time. My other big dream was to be palaeontologist/evolutionist. If something distracts me from designing and making jewellery, it's likely to be bio/palaeo/evo stuff. Synapsids, and their evolutionary line, are what I'm especially interested in. I'm writing about this, because I was thinking about somehow linking all my passions together in my jewellery designs. I'm thinking, vaguely right now, about adding prehistoric creatures to my designs. It would be in similar style to what I'm making now, probably, but the creature featured would be something that is, sadly, no longer with us. Like Inostrancevia. Or Homotherium. Or Diictodon. Or something ;) The idea gets me all excited,but I'm not sure how it will work out in the end.

 

Here, have a Homotherium latidens to illustrate that paragraph:

A word on the cuff: I don't like how the etching turned out, and decided it needs a bit of touch-up. With hand engraving. I have a set of hand gravers, I just need to learn how to use them properly, so that may take some time. I'm not ready to discard that cuff just yet. I hope it's salvageable. 

Soo... lockets, maybe palaeo stuff in designs, probably series of posts about wolves and ravens, hand engravings... that's what I'm working on right now, and I hope there will be no other flus to turn me into some kind of particularly immobile, sloppy rag wrung to within an inch of its life, and I will be actually able to do all of the above :)  

 

Till the next time (preferably not in a moth's time)

Kasia