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.