note #2
I first saw dried fava beans in an open bin in a middle eastern grocery store. I was immediately drawn to their tactile forms and warm earthy tones. I bought several pounds and took them home to experiment with. I was pleased to find that if I used a light touch (and a variable speed drill), I could pierce the bean without splitting the shell (at least most of the time). I prepared a quantity of them for stringing and began to play. The first completed piece incorporating fava beans was inspired by the desiccated remains of a floral collar worn at the funerary banquet of Tutankhamen (found in a cache of materials associated with Tut's burial and now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC). When fresh these floral collars were a colorful mix of leaves, flowers, seeds, and faience (quartz-based glazed composition) beads.
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More durable versions were replicated entirely in faience. However, despite its faded and tattered condition the Met's collar had always appealed to me as a reminder of the human side of an exalted ancient culture generally perceived to have valued the permanent rather than the ephemeral. With that first fava bean collar, I was trying to capture the essence of that fragile human artifact.
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