Book Description

Historically, the many well-known icons of the Virgin Mary included hand tooled pewter and silver halos. For iconographers today, painting saints with halos embellished in pewter is still a thriving art form in many countries, especially in Mexico. Inspired Byzantine iconographers use metal foil for embossing pewter, chasing and engraving to accent sacred art. Valentin Gomez and Mary Jane Miller's new book Embossing Metal: Templates and Beginner Techniques for tooling metal foil pewter is an essential resource. Russian and Greek iconography employ countless elaborate design styles. We offer the book as guidance, it is a collection of icon templates for those devoted to traditional fine craftsmanship. Beautifully embellished halos have been a Byzantine iconographical legacy and tradition for centuries. This book is geared towards those of you in the iconography community interested in creating your own silver halos. The first section of the book discusses tools, supplies and technique. Tools and metal foil sheets are all you need to create beautiful designs. Each tool has its own character and purpose to help you press from the back to the front and flatten raised areas that get distorted. As you learn to refine the edges of your patterns, you will add a few more tools to accommodate increased skill. This book gives you a place to begin and inspires you to go further with practice. After describing the tools and supplies, I give you basic techniques, step-by-step, to teach yourself how to create borders and halos to embellish your icons. The process is simple, and only requires investing hours of focused practice. After about ten hours of practice, you will begin to sense and feel the amount of pressure required to make fluid designs and texture. Experimenting will bring the best results and in no time you will be skilled enough to create beautiful work for embellishing your icons.