many metals, many years

New necklace: Victorian enamel and cut-steel button mixes it up with 1940s TWA DC-3 pin from a Stetson Stratoliner. Metals are mixed, too: brass and nickel silver chains and plane; and steel and pinchbeck (an alloy of copper and zinc that shines like gold) on the button. Two links from an antique watch chain accent the neck. Delicate brass-beaded rosary chain holds the twin-engine craft. That bitty plane makes me happy to no end.

wild blue yonder

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Hey, Toots!

"There are no original ideas, only original people." --Barbara Grizutti Harrison

I was inspired by a necklace I saw in an Etsy store. It incorporated a tiny metal toy airplane with the paint half worn off. I went, Want...

http://www.etsy.com/shop/KariBeth

I marked it as one of my favorites in 2007. It's long gone, but since I started making necklaces, I've kept my eye out for a tiny metal airplane (red) with the paint half worn off.


I finally found one--a little Tootsietoy Spirit of Saint Louis model--and made this necklace. It's very similar to the one I favorited on Etsy three years ago.

Toots - necklace - antique vintage assemblage

Still, it's different enough to be mine...no? It has a tailwind of crystal and steel. 


Let's say it's an homage, which, really, it is.


And I could easily have come to the idea independently. I'm always looking for non-jewelry items to put in my work. Also, turnabout, there are pieces I see in other people's shops that incorporate the ideas and materials I've used or even intend to use, like the sword-belt chain I thought would be fantastic for a man's wallet/belt chain. I bought an old sword belt in an antique store in Texas; a couple of weeks later (before I had even made my piece), I saw that another Etsy seller had made a chain very much like the one I had in mind. Murr.


I mean, there are only so many ways to hang something around your neck...

http://www.oddee.com/item_97030.aspx

8/19/2010: I came across this great presentation about copyright and creativity.

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