Le Sacre du Printemps- Blue Flame

Description

This dynamic tealight holder is a labor of love. The copper women rising out of the flames are wreathed in the flowers of spring. As I worked this one-of-a-kind piece, I had 3 classics in mind- Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), Sara Teasdale's poem Blue Squills, and a snippet from Yeats: "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

This piece is beautiful in the daytime, but it really shines at night. When the tealight's flame flickers, the women dance in the shadows cast, and there are tiny little glowing colors from the beads in the shadows.

The main stitch is freeform peyote, but there's also netting and various other embellishing stitches. The base layers of beads are anchored with copper wire for stability and longevity. The weaving is mostly done with red Silamide, which symbolizes both the fire and the rising blood/sap of Spring. Some of the flowers are done in blue or white Nymo thread. The beads are mostly seed beads with some fire-polished crystals, some glass pony beads and a fair number of Swarovski crystals. The base candleholders are made of copper and were salvaged from a thrift store pile in my friend's garage some years ago. This piece has been a long time coming to term. It measures almost 4" high from the base to the tip of the tallest flame. There is a removable glass tealight or votive holder in the center for easy cleaning. I think it works best with a tiny clear tealight, as the glowing gets more intense the further down the candle burns. The windier your environment, the more the shadows dance.

Added on Nov 03, 2009