Down Under or Across the Pond? + More video (finally!)

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The cosmic glow of the Carina Nebula as seen in a stunning 3D reconstruction in Hidden Universe, released in IMAX® theatres and giant-screen cinemas around the globe and produced by the Australian production company December Media in association with Film Victoria, Swinburne University of Technology, MacGillivray Freeman Films and ESO. The Carina Nebula contains two of the most massive and luminous stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The original image was taken by ESO's Very Large Telescope.
The cosmic glow of the Carina Nebula…a universe of creative possibilities!

Where Is There for You?

In preparation for the coming season, I’m making more time zone friendly slots available for collectors’ virtual studio tours and for students’ live Q&A coaching sessions that are part of my online school’s courses.

If you’re in a time zone that is more than 4 hours difference from Eastern Time (New York), hit reply and tell me your time zone! It will help me plan more worldwide friendly Zoom times this fall/spring.

To everyone in the USA, I wish you a very happy belated Juneteenth and happy early 4th!

…And Back in My Studio

Sometimes, as the saying goes, it takes a village to make things happen. Sometimes that village is scattered across the globe. Sometimes things just take a lot of time and energy to come together.

…Waaaaaaayyyyyyyy more time that I believe they will take.

Such is this video of the back story behind my Eastern Repoussé Tool Sets.

I began offering my tools in 2009 when I released my third video, Eastern Repoussé and Chasing. This was back in the day when metalsmithing dvds were rare and only one set of chasing tools was commercially available, and those were completely unusable without hours of refining and dressing (dressing as in what you do to silversmithing hammers not what you do in the morning or what you put on a salad).

My vision, which I’m immensely pleased to say I long ago accomplished, was to expand the lineage of Eastern repoussé with remote teaching, and I knew that making tool sets available that were perfect and ready to use right out of the package was key to that expansion.

If I had half as much time as I had ideas for videos (or as I have raw footage on my hard drive) I could probably supply enough interesting content for an entire season of a major TV network. Alas, since I am a mere mortal, I reveal these stories betwixt and between the other artwork I create. Sometimes I wield a hammer, sometimes a tiny sable paintbrush, and sometimes I wield the mouse on my iMac.

So in a very brief synopsis that traces how I took the limited world of chasing tools from cheap and unusable to DIY to wild success (and now to other companies now knocking off my success), I present the highlights of how and who make the tools that enable so many people to make things better.

The Making of Victoria Lansford’s Eastern Repoussé Tool Sets