Why chain-mail?

This is probably one of the questions I get asked most often: Why do you make chain-mail?

Truthfully? I have no idea.

I mean, I started making it because I happened to be working at a Rennaisance Faire in Wisconsin and met someone who wanted to teach me.When I first learned, I thought it was the most boring thing I had ever done. There were only those few basic weaves that people were doing, and everything was centered around various armour techniques that were hundreds of years old. It seemed that almost nobody was looking at new applications for this wonderful medium, aside from the woman who taught me, and a few higher end fashion designers.

Me? I was insatiably curious about this medium, and wanted to see how far I could push it. If there was a bit of extra space between the links, I wanted to see what would happen if I tossed another ring in there.

I had seen some work from the Islamic world using different colours, in which verses of the Qur'an were written in calligraphy in bronze on a steel background along the edge of some shirts. That was pretty neat. I've since tried my hand at doing similar work, which some call "inlay", although I have no idea why, as you are not laying the rings into anything. You are just using two colours of metal to create a pixelated pattern. (What should this be called? I'm still trying to figure it out. I know there is a term for it in tiling, or in other art forms, but I just haven't been able to figure it out.)

But there I was, learning how to explore a new medium for me, and deciding to see what I could do.

One of my favorite things was to go through knitting books and see how I could duplicate various stitching patterns in chain. That was the source of many new weaves for me.

Now I do it because I feel like I'm still exploring. It seems that I have done so much with the medium,and yet I've barely scratched the surface.

Most of the work that I do is still in terms of jewelry, for I've never thought of myself as an armourer. Fashion designs sort of came out of the jewelry work. And the art pieces were a natural extension of that exploration. But armour? I've always seen that as the bulk drudge work that I don't like doing. Besides there are so many others who do it so much better than I do.

Me? I love to doodle in chain, seeing how I can connect the links in new ways, and most of those doodles end up becoming bracelets.

Note: I don't think of the different sizes as different weaves. The weave is the manner in which the links interconnect. The aspect ration merely determines the density of that particular weave. While I normally think of the 1/2 Persian 4 as a dense weave, it is actually quite open when done with the links I use for the Mobius Balls. In fact, I've done a 1/2 Persian 12, in which the links go up through 6 and down through 6. Cool? Not really. It looked kind of weird, was a bit of fun, but impractical for me. I just wanted to see if it would work. Now I know.

Anyways, why chain-mail? Because I feel as if I can do just as much with chain as I can with a pencil or paints. The medium is immaterial. It is the creativity and the exploration behind it that counts.

The Mobius Ball

This little thing has been annoying, frustrating, fascinating and haunting me for years. (Hey, those were almost in alphabetical order.)

The Mobius Ball is one of those weird little chain-mail things that just sort of came out of a frustrating moment for me. I was working in some small links, probably 18 gauge 1/4 inch or something like that (if I was near my studio right now I could probably look around tell you, but I'm not and it really doesn't matter anyways so I'll just continue on with the story), and making an Oriental 6:1 bracelet. the flat links for this particular bracelet required doubling up, at least, and tripling them up looked far better.

So I did.

But I didn't want to just triple them up because I thought that would look a bit boring, so I interlinked them instead. One brass. One copper. One nickel. I started making these little florets and setting them aside to put into that bracelet.

And I kept on making them.

And making them.

 On and on.

And on.

And it got phenomenally boring and tedious and repetitive and redundant (like this passage).

At one point I got so frustrated just sitting there making these stupid little florets that I decided to see just how many I could cram into there. Then, like all good periods following a moment of frustration, I sat back and looked at what I had just done.

(And I just realized that I don't have a photo of one on my computer, so check back later today or tomorrow and I'll replace this paragraph with a photo of one) (An original one, complete with the packaging and all) (And maybe, if you're good, I'll post the text of the card that comes with it)

It looked kind of cool, spirally goodness and all. After another ten minutes or so, I realized that I had been fidgeting with it the whole time. I managed to put it down and finish that bracelet, but afterwards that annoying little ball of metal found its way back into my hands.

This was on a Wednesday.

That weekend I went to my shop at the Bristol Renaissance Faire and showed Connie.

She sort of shrugged when she saw it and said "It's kind of neat, but can you make it bigger?"

"No", was my naive reply, "that's all the links that will fit in there."

She looked at me like I was a complete idiot, which I guess I was at that moment, and said, "Try using bigger links."

My jaw must have fallen open as I stood there dumbfounded that I hadn't thought of such an obvious answer myself.

Needless to say, it was a hit.

I gave one to a friend of mine who was blind, and a week later he was still playing with it. I recently received an e-mail from another friend who got hers at that time, nearly 20 years ago (yes, Denise, it's been that long), and she said she still plays with it. (Actually, I think I gave her two.)

I spent many weekends that season making Mobius Balls, which just seemed to me to be the obvious thing to call it. And when I wasn't making Mobius Balls, I was showing people the Mobius strip and explaining why I came up with that name. It was a very fun weekend as I showed hundreds of people the joy of drawing that line on a Mobius strip and how it goes all around to the other side, and then back again to join itself. Then cutting along the line was even more fun as people saw what happened.

The real thrill, though, was when I had them draw the line 1/3 of the way across, instead of in the middle, and then cut on that line. I had more than a few people scream in amazement.

But back to the Mobius Ball.

We realized that we were onto something there, and within a couple of days of creating it began the process of patenting it, as well as trademarking the name. (Yes, it really is trademarked.)

A short time after that, we did the packaging, and the rest is history.

A couple of short asides about the Mobius Ball:

1. It was an utter business failure. Although we sold a lot of them, it didn't come close to paying its own costs. This is probably due to my poor acumen as a businessman, and the use of distributors who weren't really hot on it. One point against me there.

2. When one of the lawyers went to get it patented, it was turned down at first. The office said that there wasn't anything original about it, as it was too close to the Swedish wedding rings. My lawyer flew in to Washington, DC, for the appeal, walked in the office and merely handed it to the guy for the meeting, instead of shaking his hand. The appeal person found himself holding it, moved it as one is wont to do, and said, quite simply, that we got the patent. One point for me, yay.

3. When I got on the bus to meet with the graphics designers about the design and text for the card, I realized that I had completely forgotten to write any text for the interior. (Another point against me.) As I had about 10 minutes before my stop, I quickly scribbled down what came to mind. It wasn't quite enough text, so I put in the warning label. Everyone in the meeting loved it so much that they didn't change a word (to my shock). Oh, but we were still just a bit shy on the word count, so one of the graphic designers added in another line on the warning label: If splashed in eyes, rinse immediately with warm water. (One point for her.)

And what, you may ask, happened to that first one? My friend Kirin has it.

* * * * *

Ok. Here are the photos that I promised up above. And I also figured why bother trying to hide my disorganization. You might as well enjoy it.

And the text? It says, in both English and French, "The mobius ball is based upon a mathematical concept expressing infinity in a finite space. Whether used as a focus for meditation or as a diversion from daily drudgeries, the mobius ball provides intellectual stimulation with a fascinating and soothing tactile sensation."

The warning label then reads:

• for external use only
• not intended for internal consumption
• if splashed in eyes, rinse immediately with warm water
• recyclable where facilities exist
• batteries not included

The Persian Weave

There have been a lot of questions about the name of the "Persian" weave on various blogs and sites on chain-mail. Many have claimed that it is because it was first in use way back in the Persian Empire, but as many scholars and historians have pointed out, there is no evidence for this.

When I was working at our store Chained Lynx,  in Evanston, IL in the early 1990s, I was playing around with the box weave.  This is that version of the European 4:1, 3 wide, folded over and seamed up the back. As I'm sure you know, it kept frustrating me how the last section would fall over on itself and become 2 links to 2 links to 2 links. I really hated the way it looked, and wanted to do something to stabilize it.

As I was using 16-gauge 3/8 inch rings, I noticed that there was plenty of room to tuck those last few links inside the weave, instead of having them hanging outside it where they could, and did, fall over. I tried doing that, and it worked.

Then I didn't like the way that it was suddenly no longer symmetrical, and so I reconnected all the links on the inside. Up one side, down the other. To my surprise I only needed to do 2 sides to make it look good. I expected to have to do all 4. (Hey, come on. I'd never done this before, and hadn't seen anyone else do it either, so give me a break.)

After successfully getting that silly bracelet to look good, and to my satisfaction, I put it in the display rack and didn't think anything else of it.

The next day a friend of mine, Rita Burke, came in and was looking at the new bracelets.

She spotted that bracelet and said, "That's a new weave."

"No it isn't", I replied. "It's just a box weave." After all, I hadn't thought that I was creating anything new, just fixing something old.

She persisted in her view, and showed me the new one alongside an old one, and you know what? She was right. It was because of Rita, and her love of that new weave, that I kept on making them.

I brought the new bracelet, and many others like it, to the Bristol Renaissance Faire that summer where I began calling it the Persian weave.

Why Persian?

Simple, really. I'm a member of the Baha'i Community, and I wanted to honour my religion. As I realized that calling it the "Baha'i" weave would just sound silly to anyone else, I decided to call it "Persian", which is where the Baha'i Faith came from.

Needless to say, the name stuck.

One little thing that I have rarely shared about this "discovery": I knew that if you took the box weave and removed a row, it would fall into the European 4:1. After Rita left the store, I decided to see what would happen if I removed a row from the Persian. To my shock, it held its shape. This I quickly called the 3/4 Persian.

Still being the curious little bug that I am, I wondered what would happen if I removed a second row. I must have stared at it in awe for over an hour: the 1/2 Persian.

Then, still being curious, I wondered what would happen if I removed a third row. That was when I discovered just how silly I can be, as I stared at a pile of links. (All right. I only removed two, but still. It was rather silly of me.)

A couple of days after that,  I was playing around again and realized that there was plenty of space still left between the links. The 1/2 Persian, as you know, goes up through 1, down through 2. And so I tried going up through 2, down through 2. Again, to my shock, it worked: the 1/2 Persian 4. To this day, it is still one of my favorite weaves.

There are plenty of places on the internet where you can find these weaves, and the many variations on it. One of my favorite sites is: http://mailleartisans.org/weaves/weavelist.php?tags=Persian

Oh, and it was a few years later that I saw a jewelry magazine from the mid-1980's that had a single example of this weave in silver. Aside from that one photo, which only listed it as "chain bracelet", I've never seen any other earlier examples.

Who Am I?

While it would be so easy to go off into philosophy and theology about who I am, I'll think I'll just stick to the point: I'm Mead.

I began making chain-mail back in 1987, when it seemed to me that it was a dying art. There were pretty much only 7 weaves that were being used, with dozens of names for them. To most jewelers and artists, chain-mail seemed like a silly anachronistic form with little use, aside from designers like Paco Rabanne.

I first learned the basic weaves under Connie Gilbert, and then joined her and Cindy Simms at Chained Lynx. We opened a store in Evanston, IL sometime around 1990, and both went on to bigger and better things since then. When I moved to Canada a few years later, I started Northern Lynx. When it became obvious that I would need a corporation for the Mobius Ball patent (yes, I'm the one who created, named and patented it), I began Radical Lynx, at which point I discovered, to my shame, my lack of head for business.

One day, shortly after I began to make chain, Connie gave me a gift of chain-mail juggling cubes. They were a standard Oriental 4:1, in a 4x4x4 grid. I just loved them, but asked if she could make juggling balls. She said that it wasn't possible, aside from covering a ball in chain-mail. It was, she said, a puzzle for chain-mailers for a very long time.  A couple of minutes later, I suggested a pattern, but she said it wouldn't work. A few minutes after that, she walked out of the room and went into the studio. And a few minutes after that, there was a scream. My suggestion had worked.

And that, dear Reader, was the beginning of my career in chain-mail.

It was at that point that Connie recognized that I had some skill in developing new weaves, and she encouraged me in that over the next few years. (More on those "new" weaves later.)

Since that time, while I still do fashion designs and jewelry, my main focus has been on art pieces, including a copy of Van Gogh's Sunflowers in chain-mail. (The full story on that later, too.)