The Bronze Age

The material for an eighth wedding anniversary gift is bronze. In keeping with my discipline of making a gift for Sara out of the material of the year (see 2008), I started 2009 thinking about a way to make a gift out of bronze.

I found the prospect quite daunting. After all, I didn't really have the time and wherewithal to do bronze forging or casting. I thought briefly about taking an object of ours and getting it bronzed--but surely that would be cheating. How on earth would I manage to craft this heavy metal without spending an arm and a leg on education and materials?

Sometime in spring it dawned on me that metal wire can be worked with a minimum of training and resources. Bronze wire it was. Now, what to make out of wire for a woman who doesn't wear much jewelry? After many weeks of letting the creative juices steep on the stove of slumber, the right answer materialized. I would make cribbage pegs out of bronze.

Maybe I should back up a bit. During our world travels in 2006, Sara and I would spend down time playing cribbage on a tiny travel board (thanks, Kerkhoffs, for that gift!). Now that we had our own home, there is no reason not to have a full-size cribbage board, with custom-made scoring pegs. Ornament and function would come together beautifully; and in the process we might be able to reclaim our lost habit of playing cribbage together.

Here's an example of the wire work for one of the pegs, to become the letter "E" on the peg:

And the set of three "E" pegs finished:

Since it's our anniversary together, of course there need to be pegs for Sara:

Every good cribbage set has three sets of pegs, so I began crafting a more iconic set:

This wire would become the first of three monkeys, the animal who has become our mascot since my fateful run-in with Sophie:

As with so many of my projects, the spurt of creativity leads to a host of consequences which require more planning and work. In this case, bronze-adorned cribbage pegs require a cribbage board. I did not have the resources to make a cribbage board out of bronze, but I had my never-ending supply of MDF scraps, which is easy to cut and drill.

Loathe to do something so mundane as a typical cribbage board, I decided to make a board that, in the course of a game, would lead the players through a cartoon rendition of our homestead. So I designed the Tylers' Cribbage Board, to reflect the property with which we have been so happy and of which my wife is so proud.

First, I planned the board with proper size, spacing, and number of holes. This involved more math than I initially appreciated:

Next, I drilled through the paper template into the MDF board:

Next, I drew the "map" of our land on the board:

A round of cribbage takes you across the stone patio, through the garden, past the fire pit, for a walk in the hay field, up the treehouse, and across the creek, a complete tour of the Tyler estate in 121 points:

All in celebration of eight years of marriage:

All of this work was done on the sly, hidden from the eyes of my lovely wife, at Bobby's studio (thanks, Bobby!):

I had with me the capable assistance of GBaby (who here is keeping in touch with her peeps on a plush pink cell phone):

I tested the ink for color-fastness under preservatives of different types (I finally decided good ol' polyurethane was the best):

Three layers of shellac to get that smooth shine:

Et voila! One custom-made cribbage board ready for play (and for hanging on the wall when not in use):

And at very last, the final goal, one pleased Better Half:

Happy Bronze Anniversary, baby!

~emrys