I love this piece of metal. I love the way feeding it through the rolling mill to make it thinner made it all wavy. I love that when I held the fire a little too long in certain places it wrinkled like fabric. It makes me happy to look at. The interesting thing about it is that it’s the background piece for a pendent I’m working on. It’s not the center of attention, the main event. Most of it won’t even show. It has not gone unnoticed that what makes this piece of metal extraordinary are the uneven tones and cracks and patinas that stress and heat and age bring, the crooked spine, the wrinkled surface. When this piece of silver was new and straight and smooth and perfect, I didn’t like it as much. And after all, underneath, hiding in plain sight, it’s exactly the same piece of metal it was before.