A six word Saturday post
Can you guess what it cost to bronze a pair of baby shoes in 2016?*
I’ve seen a lot of bronze baby shoes mounted on a photo stand. Derek Jeter had a hat bronzed, I read on their site. (Doesn’t have to be baby shoes)
Wednesday night, I was cleaning out a desk drawer and found this envelope and special value certificate to “use by Aug 11, 1986”. Oooops! My money saver certificate has long expired.
American Bronzing Company is still in business (since 1934) I checked them out and there are a lot of options. Not sure if the ashtray is still available but the company has bronzed over ” 14,000,000 baby shoes.”
Our story begins in 1934, when Violet Shinbach, the “mother of baby shoe bronzing,” established a business that would soon become the American Bronzing Company, the largest and most-trusted baby shoe bronzing company in the world.
*And today it would cost $79.00 to get a pair of baby shoes bronzed, unmounted.
I should have ordered in 1986.
I see you can get silver plate restored too if you have an old tea service that needs spiffing up.
The seniors in sixth period finished their Digital Photography exam. And after homeroom, the seniors were allowed to go home.
One of the young women in the class and my homeroom, handed me this two tone metal dog pin and said, “Here Ms. Hendricks. This is for you.”
I was so surprised. She’d made it in Jewelry Class.
I took the highly polished pin and pinned it on my shirt collar, fastening the safety clasp, thanked her and told her how lovely it was…. but then as I thought about it, I asked her if maybe she should give it to someone in her family, it was so beautiful.
She said, “No, I want you to have it.”
My first year teaching high school is coming to a close. I’m touched when asked to sign a yearbook. They want me to bring my camera to graduation on Saturday.
I’ve learned a lot.
Thank you Jaquea. (p.s. It is really difficult to photograph highly polished metal)
Sometimes you see something on the fly- take a quick picture and later you think, oh,
I should have taken a little more time, shot more views or gotten better photographs as you review what you captured.
I left these photos the way I took them- a bit crooked, a partial door- as a reminder to take my time and get the detail, watch the angle,
*note to self– take a few more pictures when you see something magnificent, unusual and interesting. Take the entire door in the frame!
When we hung the art show at the City County Building downtown Pittsburgh, we were getting into the elevators and I took a couple of photographs of the bronze elevator doors. You almost felt like you were in Florence.
Henry Hornbostel was the architect of the building (and about fifty other building that are still in the city) but I couldn’t find who designed and sculptured/cast the elevator doors specifically. They were amazing to see. Figures with earlier government buildings in hand. Definitely need to get to the Carnegie Library for some detailed research but just look at the doors and think about how they don’t make buildings like this anymore. There’s a lot of history in the story of the doors that I don’t have at hand. Details later.
Brass vs. Bronze the difference in the two metals information here
