She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay
And you wouldn’t want me any other way
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay
And you wouldn’t want me any other way
– “Beeswing”, Richard Thompson
They make (how I have no idea) what are called ‘pearl feathers’. This is real mother of pearl, sliced paper thin whence it can be flattened (again, I do not know how). The result is a sheet which is so thin it is nearly transparent at one angle of light, and pearly and opaque at another angle of light.
I have had some of these pearl feathers in my ‘toolbox’ for a long time. The stuff is ‘interesting’ to work with. It is very brittle. Trying to cut out pieces with the jewelers saw like regular pearl, even with an 8/0 sawblade which is so fine you almost need a magnifying glass just to see the saw teeth so you get it in the saw frame the correct way, does not work. The blade teeth cause the edge of the cut to chip and crack. I found that the best way to cut it is with a pair of sharp scissors, making an initial cut outside the line, and then coming back for a final, very fine, trimming cut.
I did one experiment a couple of years ago making dragonfly wings. (You can see an example back on the early pages of this blog.) I am building a parlor guitar for a client who wanted a bee on the heel as a tribute to her husband who is a bee keeper, so I decided to get out the pearl feathers to make the bee’s wings. (The Richard Thompson song has been stuck in my head as I worked on this.) The result is a bee where you can almost see the sycamore wood of the heel cap through the wings at one angle, and the wings change with the angle of light giving the bee quite a bit of movement.
