Avis Dickensii

This project grew from an idea of building abstractions of birds from found or repurposed objects. Each piece was improvised as I went which was exciting but also often led to dead ends.

Bird #1

The first one built was the mother, though the gender was indeterminate at the start. Her angular structure is based on an acute scalene triangle (all sides different, no right-angles). Card was used to build the body which was reinforced with a zigzag of the same card. The result is a hollow, very light but strong body, i.e. bird-like. This was then covered with pieces of paper from an 1873 edition of Charles Dickens' "Pickwick Papers".

(Although this felt sacrilegious, I bought the book for 99p from a charity shop, its cover falling off, and its pages discoloured - a poor choice for a library but perfect for reuse.) The body was finished off with two coats of clear water-based varnish.

The legs were a challenge and I soon realised that the body was so narrow that I would only have space for one leg. This necessitated a large foot for stability. After some experimenting, I came up with a fairly elegant shape for the foot that could be bent using loops but without knots or locking twists.

The knee joint is a two-coil helix that allows simple adjustment of the angle at the joint. At the top of the leg is a loop that allows the leg to be attached to the body using a small screw. I decided that the birds should all share the same quirky single-leg design though the female foot is a slightly earlier design and is wrapped in fine copper wire - an avian fashion statement perhaps.

The beak and eyes were made from 6000-year-old bog oak, its black colour deriving from the iron and minerals in the bog as they had gradually been replacing the cellulose in the wood on its slow journey to petrification. It was interesting how the carved and polished wood resembled both beaks and talons.

The crest was made from fabric offcuts kindly supplied by Vanessa Arbothnott in Cirencester. Pieces were glued together to create double-sided fabric.

Bird #2

The shape of the second bird is based on two disks just off parallel to each other. On a whim, I cut open a beer can to make a sheet and held the painted side in a gas flame. This produced coppery shades on the inside of the can together with some blue and green tinges. I cut shapes from this to create armour for the bird, with the three pieces sewn together using thin copper strands from electrical flex. (It was as fiddly as it sounds).

Wings were created using more pieces of fabric and the armour was then topped with a plume made from feathers picked up on local walks. The finished item reminds me of a Roman helmet. As an after-thought I made a pair of glasses from garden wire that perch on its beak.

Bird #3

The third figure was the hardest to complete, probably because the spherical base (a table-tennis ball) didn't have any orientation to influence the design. However, once the beech-wood thigh stump was attached and the beak added, the rest followed (the stump was needed since there was no ribbing inside the ping-pong ball through which I could push the leg for support). The baby bird takes on characteristics from both parents: an immature crest from the mother and feathers from the father. The crest is attached to a copper bar on the head using 7 copper wire ties.

The family

The 'family' relationship of the group gradually evolved and each bird seemed to develop its own characteristics. The mother is plain but haughty, towering over the short-sighted father who is much more ornate and proudly wears his helmet of office. The baby has its head cocked to one side as if slightly puzzled and is frantically flapping its wings to get attention.

The improvisatory nature of the designs was exciting and, clichéd though it may sound, I look at them now and wonder quite where they came from. But the combination of copper wire, found feathers, 140-year-old paper, beer cans and 6000-year-old wood was really fun to work with.

August 2015