BASKING IN IVAAN'S REFLECTED GLORY

Every so often, I'll get a commission from a client who has inherited or collected jewellery from family members which, though of sentimental value, are really not wearable "as is".    Often, the pieces of jewellery have been sitting around in a jewellery box for many years, unseen, unworn, but not unloved.

I think it takes some courage to be able to say, "I would like to wear all this; can you remake it into something I'll absolutely love?"

And sometimes, that client will be looking through sample rings by Ivaan and just fixate on one particular item.  I'll pull out more and more options, but they always come back to their first crush.

I just love it when the ring they are attracted to happens to be a signature Ivaan piece, and it also happens to look perfect on their hand.  That's what happened recently:  our good friend D brought her good friend M in to see what we could do with her collection of family jewellery, M fell in love with Ivaan's "Lana" ribbon ring, and I got to work on a ring that incorporated all her gold and all her diamonds.

Here, then, is M's new ring.  I hope she screams when she sees it.  On days like this, when I've just finished a ring that practically made itself and came out perfectly, I feel I'm basking in Ivaan's reflected glory and I am pretty sure he's rather proud of me.

White Gold & Diamond "Lana" Ribbon Ring © ATELIER IVAAN

THE SELFIE PIONEER

Decades before the "selfie" (a snapshot taken by ourselves and of ourselves) became an actual noun, Ivaan had invented and mastered the technique.  I never thought about it until a few days ago, when I was contemplating the unforeseen effects of digital photography.  Ivaan disapproved of digital photography and only ever bought one digital camera.  He predicted, accurately, that digital photography would bring about the end of skill in taking a photograph, because it was so easy to "destroy the evidence" of a bad photograph.

In film photography, the good, the bad and the ugly were all there on your negatives, so there was a good reason to ensure you were taking a worthwhile shot in the first place.  In digital photography, skill was replaced with chance: just delete the images you don't want anybody to see, and no one will ever know they existed.

So, taking a "selfie" with a film camera was an act of bravery, as well as a test of skill.  Here are a couple of selfies of us, taken by Ivaan back in the late 1980s.  Not sure why my hair looked so black in this first photo, because it wasn't, but my blue mascara was pretty impressive. The second one has a kind of Dr. Zhivago vibe to it.

Ivaan, you were truly the selfie pioneer and the undisputed master of the art form.

COLOUR MEETS FORM

This afternoon, I was in the slave shop, trying to preserve my manicure while polishing a ring, when the store door opened.  In came a woman who was delivering an incredible floral arrangement.  Architecturally, it's a marvel, so tall that it nearly touches the ceiling, and when she set it down, we both had to stand  back and catch our breath because it looked so breathtaking against our green wall.   It's so Ivaan-like in its riot of colour and form, just like his most extravagant work.  I only wish he were here to show me how to photograph it well.  In order to fit the whole arrangement into the camera frame, I thought I would have to go outside (it's a small store and there is nothing small about these flowers).

Walking around it, the arrangement is quite different from every angle, and it reminds me strongly of Ivaan's aesthetic sense: every side is its best side.  Every single person who came into the store since then has been pretty much stunned into silence.  One guy forgot what he came here for. It dwarfs the enormous paintings on the wall behind it. I gave up polishing jewellery for the day, because I just wanted to hang around here and bask in the glow, and it would have felt all wrong not to have perfect fingernails at a time like this.

If you are out and about in Toronto tomorrow, you might want to drop by Atelier Ivaan.  But I guarantee you won't be looking at any jewellery.
To my friend and benefactor, thank you for your flowers and your note.  You really touched me. I'm not often short of words, but I was today.

GINGKO BILOBA

The first time I ever saw a Ginkgo Biloba leaf was on a piece of small sculpture made by Ivaan.  I honestly thought it was one of his fantastical creations, not an actual leaf that existed in nature.  This is his ginkgo leaf, running up and down the left side of the sculpture:

©1979 Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

The second time I saw a Ginkgo Biloba leaf was on an actual tree, at the entrance to the cemetery where Ivaan is buried.  I knew he'd played there as a child, and perhaps that's where he had first seen this magnificent tree.  I didn't even know what it was called.  As soon as I found out, I ordered a Ginkgo and planted it in the back yard.  It seemed to thrive, and it was a bit tough, leaving it behind when I sold the house.

There's a concrete planter on the sidewalk in front of Atelier Ivaan, and ever since I've been here, a diseased Ash tree has occupied it.  I decided to ask the City if, when they removed the Ash, I could buy a Ginkgo and plant it there.  I was thrilled that they offered to supply a Ginkgo.  Today, the men from Urban Forestry arrived with two Ginkgo Biloba trees and they let me have my pick. It's a fabulous one.

I likely won't win any awards for my photography, but here it is.  The Ginkgo Biloba is an ancient and very slow-growing tree that is believed to have originated in what is now China.  It is able to thrive in less than ideal conditions and is known for cleaning pollutants from the air. I promise to water it faithfully every evening this summer and to admire it and be reminded of Ivaan every time I pass it.  So much beauty would have escaped my eyes, had it not been for my good fortune in learning to see the natural world through Ivaan's eyes.

And in case you, like me, have been living in ignorance of the beauty of the Ginkgo Biloba, I've plucked a couple of leaves and photographed them for you.

HOW TO LIVE

I've been making a ring as a gift for someone who has been such an important part of Ivaan's and my life.  I've learned a lot from her.  When someone you love is dying, it's hard not to fixate on the impending death, trying to protect them from pain and fear, trying to distract them from what is inevitable, trying to soothe them and make them comfortable - and, in doing so, insulating them and making their life become smaller and smaller.

It's really only in retrospect that I've come to realize that the braver, kinder way is to help them have a bigger and bigger life.  I don't mean the "bucket list" sort of life, where you're helping them tick off items on a list of external achievements: hiking to Machu Picchu, swimming with dolphins, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean a life that is not defined by physical, medical or mental limitations, where one's biggest fear does not involve being too cold, or hungry, or tired, or having one's prescription run out.  I mean a life where there is hope, an opportunity and a reason to dream.

I'm making this ring for someone who for eight years inspired Ivaan to recover from each stroke, to live large, to plan the impossible by envisioning a recovery that was his if only he would reach for it - by telling him with the full authority of medical expertise that the impossible was indeed possible, and that it lay within his grasp.

I'm proud to have been able to keep Ivaan feeling safe, comfortable, loved, protected and fed, but I'm even prouder to know that someone else was inspiring him to live the fullest, most satisfying, bravest life, to face hardships, to surmount obstacles, and to continue to contribute to the lives of the people he loved, mine especially, until his last day on earth.

Cheryl, I hope this ring reminds you of Ivaan, because it reminds me of the two of you.

(c) 2008 Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

MY EUREKA MOMENT

Back in 2006, Ivaan made an 18 karat yellow gold ring for a young man who had first seen Ivaan's jewellery in 1999 when he moved to Toronto from St. Petersburg, Russia.   In the intervening years, he had married and the first of his two daughters was born, so it had been a busy few years for him, but he always remembered the impact this one particular ring had made on him.  So he did some detective work, managed to locate Ivaan's former partner, Tamas, and that's how this young man, whom we'll call S, came to reconnect with Ivaan and to have the beautiful Ivaan ring he'd dreamed of.

Sadly, a couple of years later, his beloved ring disappeared down a storm sewer grate and he felt its absence keenly.  There wasn't much we could do, as Ivaan was gravely ill and very close to the end of his life, but I told S that if I ever found the mould, I'd make him a replacement in silver. I did look several times among the moulds for 1999 and prior, and was unable to find the mould.  For a while, I'd make piles of moulds (à la Ivaan) with notes on them saying "S's ring?" but when I injected them with wax, they were invariably the wrong mould.  I felt quite discouraged.

Meanwhile, S moved back to Russia.

Last week, as I was injecting the moulds from 2006, I discovered a misfiled mould whose wax was almost certainly S's ring.  With shaking hands, I took a photograph and emailed it to him.  Next day, S confirmed that it was indeed his ring.  Here's the wax:

(c) 1999 Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

A few days ago, I cast it in sterling silver.  I think it came out pretty excellently.

(c) 1999 Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

And now, my mission (should I choose to accept it) is to figure out how to get the ring safely from Toronto to St. Petersburg, Russia.

AN ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG

Recently, I've started honing my wax injection skills out of stark necessity.  I'd decided to make a complete inventory of waxes from Ivaan's rubber moulds, dating back to 1976, of which there are now about two thousand.  Waxes come in different colours, each with its own properties.  Probably the least forgiving is dark blue.  It captures detail beautifully but it is harder and more brittle than most of the other colours.  But I prefer it, because I'm able to see the fine details more clearly than if I'd used a lighter coloured wax.

It used to baffle Ivaan that I organized his moulds according to year. His standard procedure was to have them organized according to nothing. He figured if he put a mould in a particular place, he would remember where it was.  This worked about 1 per cent of the time.  Ivaan never really used his moulds once he made them; they were simply a record of the pieces he'd made. He might search for one if a client lost a ring and he had to duplicate it, but basically they just sat there in stacks.

I found the "filed by year" system to be useful, because it tracked how prolific he had been in a particular year, and I eventually realized that a large number of moulds in any one year meant he was likely to have a health crisis.  Both heart attacks and all five strokes were preceded by a significantly larger number of moulds.  If he'd been a squirrel, he would have been storing nuts for winter. And like a squirrel, a lot of random digging was required when he suddenly had to find a particular one.

I started with the year 2002, because there were over 100 moulds from that year (and his massive stroke was in December 2002).  He had done some brilliant work that year.  At first, it was taking me about ten tries to produce a reasonably good wax, but I guess wax injecting shares some characteristics with film photography:  after a while you start analyzing what you did wrong, and trying to improve the result by better technique:  more or less pressure, higher or lower wax temperature, longer or shorter cooling time.

And soon, I'd noticed my average was about one in six.  I was making progress.  I was particularly good at the bigger pieces, such as pendant pieces, and I once did about forty perfect waxes in a row on the first try.  I felt extremely proud of myself when I took some of my waxes to the caster, to have them cast in metal.  He looked at the dark blue waxes curiously and asked, "Who did these?"  I summoned up all my nonchalance to reply casually that I'd made them myself, but it was hard to wipe the smile off my face when he said admiringly, "These are g-o-o-o-d."

So I've now finished 2002, 2006, 2008, and I've started on the "Current" bin - the moulds I've made since Ivaan's death.  It's been a very fruitful endeavour, as I've found incredible things I'd never seen before.  When I am working on injecting waxes, I have the strongest sense of Ivaan's presence in the room. Ivaan must be as impressed with his brilliance as I am.  The wax injector now sits in the store.  I love it when people come in to watch and are gobsmacked by the beauty of some of his newly-dug-up artefacts.

Here's a photo of the pendant pieces of 2002:  can't you just imagine wearing one of these around your neck?

(c)  2002 ESTATE OF IVAAN KOTULSKY