Chrysopoeia
'Chrysopoeia' Claire Passmore ©2014
|
Chrysopoeia In times past one of the fundamental goals of the alchemists was to transmute other elements into gold, more correctly termed ‘chrysopoeia’. Today we know that transmutation from one element to another actually does occur within the nuclear reactors of stars in a process called nucleosynthesis. For larger elements more energy is required, like that in the stellar explosions of supernovas, where gold can be transformed into lead, but sadly not the other way around! The quilt was made in response to a challenge to members of the Contemporary Quilt group of the Quilters Guild in the UK. The title of the challenge was 'elements' and I was delighted that my quilt was selected, along with 42 others to be displayed in the Contemporary Quilt gallery. When making the quilt I wanted to try to use some of the secretive symbols used by the ancient alchemists. I also wanted to use colours that reflected their use of lead, mercury, iron and sulphur in their quest - and of course, I had to use real gold. |
Preliminary work from my sketchbook
|
|
|
Adding surface design to the fabrics
This is the hand dyed fabric I started with.
|
Marks were made on the fabric by mono printing on a sheet of glass with black printing ink
|
You can see the intense marks the ink leaves on the fabric
|
This time I used a plastic cotton reel and a thick cardboard tube to create more marks marks
|
Scratched cross hatching marks
Circles
|
Squiggles and wiggles
Lines
|
Making the quilt top
The fabrics were cut into strips and joined to make a large panel
|
Gold leaf was added to the surface of the quilt
|
Small squares were stitched on with fly stitch
|
