The Thing With Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune--without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

-Emily Dickinson-

When I took my metal class last Fall, one of the techniques we tried was learning how to anneal a piece of metal and then run it through the roller press for texture. I, of course, used a peacock stencil I had and made 2 plates from it. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with these feathers until this weekend. I decided to cut them out in a circle shape, and make a bail out of the copper scraps, attaching it with a rivet. The backside needed a little something, so I engraved a quote from the Emily Dickinson poem above. Hanging from an 18" copper ball chain makes it simple and elegant.

Now available on Etsy.