Daylily Addiction

Friday, April 28, 2006

Ivory Scratchin'


I've been a scrimshander since 1979. For the uninitiated that means I create art works on various forms of ivory, commonly known as scrimshaw. To be simplistic, I merely incise images onto the surface of a piece of ivory, coloring them with inks or oil colors. It's a repetitive technique of cutting or incising the surface, applying pigment, wiping it off, and repeating the process until the desired effects are achieved.

Most of my subject matter is wildlife, with emphasis on birds of prey and the big cats of the world. I do not do any maritime subjects as might have been done by the scrimshanders of the 18th and 19th centuries. I utilize many forms of legal ivory including elephant, wooly mammoth and fossilized walrus.

The attached photo shows a mother Snow Leopard and cub on a piece of mammoth ivory, mounted on a base of eucalyptus burl and ebony.

Daylily Addiction


I realize I have an addiction for daylilies each time I order plants for which I have no room! I guess I've gone from the ridiculous to the sublime in regard to acquiring new daylilies. This year I purchased approximately forty new plants, and at the time of purchase had space for perhaps five of them. Using a very vigorous plan of culling and carving out more lawn I've been able to shoehorn all of them in. At present Muriel and I have approximately 480 varieties.

Although our garden contains all types of daylilies my favorites are spiders and unusual forms. I've also begun collecting polytepalous flowers which may have four or five sepals compared to the usual three. Some polytepals are also spiders or unusual forms, so they give me more bang for the buck so to speak. One favorite is MEHTA, a lavender and white large open form, a very ethereal daylily.