Jiyûka Chard WC#580

This is certainly a very colorful and photogenic vegetable. I like the different colored stems and your artistic arrangement. The lighting helps highlight the great texture in the leaves and the black background works well to show off the vibrant colors. I'm not very familiar with this vegetable and not sure if I've ever eaten it. Sound like you've eaten it though, even if "charred". However, if your wife sees this post, you may be making your own dinner!

Thank you, Carolyn Derstein. My wife has never been on this forum, nor will she ever be; I ain't no fool!

John, enjoyed all your shots this week, especially this one. Nicely arranged and the black really shows off the colorful chard. The brown wood vine (?) adds a nice counterpoint to the brilliant pink and green and helps to frame the arrangement on the bottom. The softbox produces some wonderful light.

Thanks for looking and commenting, Jim. The wife is a metal smith and potter and now she is into glass too. You should see our electric bill!

But anyway, this is a branch of a contorted filbert which we grew in our yard specifically for this purpose. After selection, several coats of latex rubber are applied. They are carefully removed to make a mold for wax. The wax replica is used to make a lost-core sand mold, properly sprued, into which molten bronze is poured. This, then, is demolded, ,cleaned up, and given a patina by heating it up and spraying on it nitric acid with various things dissolved in it.

The glass is made by taking sheets of glass with various opalescent factors included and heating it in a kiln over a mold where it "slumps" into the form you see. The image doesn't capture these elements because it was supposed to be all about me and the chard and this week's Weekly Challenge. A lot of her stuff is sort of Asian influence, (and she only sells stuff wholesale.) Probably more information than you were looking for, but now you know "the rest of the story." Good day,