Hammering and polishing

Today I had to return to the Atélier, negating what otherwise would have been a trip to the Louvre. But the leather on my matrix was wet, and it was left overnight to dry a little bit, but it needed to be hammered and polished before it dried out.



The first hammering is done with a sawed-off cow's horn, above. You use the tiny point to make small but intense craters in the leather. I think the idea is to crush the cellular structure of the leather, to release the substances within, and to compress it to make it thinner and denser. You have to hit it thousands of times, without leaving gaps. It's a workout for the forearm.

This is the phase where the leather is really stretched out over the form of the matrix, and the mask begins to take shape.

The next step is to use a plastic or resin hammer (not pictured) to beat down the ridges between the craters created in the first hammering. It is then of a more uniform thickness.

You then take the horn hammer again and, turning it over, rub the smooth curved surface of the horn over the leather in a process of polishing or shining. This is the weirdest, most mysterious, and most difficult part of the process: you can't just dig into the leather or you'll effectively just rough it up and scratch it. Instead, it's kind of like you're pushing the horn to a certain depth, where the internal substances are exposed and can be released. You then push the horn around at this depth to spread these substances around. And this somehow makes the leather shine:


The leather also darkens considerably in this phase, especially as you push the horn harder and deeper. Most of these color differences will disappear when the mask is tinted later on.

This is the final and most thorough stage of shaping, and where the leather really adapts itself to the structure of the matrix. You have to struggle to work the leather along each side of every protruding surfaces, to really push the edges into shape and make well-defined lines. And you have to dig very deep into the interior creases to get shine and definition there. The forehead wrinkles and naso-labial fold on this mask are the most difficult parts. The nose is not much fun, either.

At this stage, little remains to do on the structure of the mask except to remove it from the matrix and modify the tongues of leather (which are currently nailed into the wood) so that they can hold a wire and define the edge of the mask. But it needs to dry out some first. So I will leave it out in the air until Monday.