Bone Carving, In Pictures

My initial design in my journal copied over to the bone. It's a Fern! It only seems appropriate since my name is Fern and I'm in New Zealand where ferns are everywhere: in nature, in culture, in history, in logos..

Practice drilling. Which I turned into a semi-smiley face!

Cutting out the design with the drill in the background. This hurts the hands, greatly.

Done cutting!

Thinned and rounded...

No pictures of the filing and sanding and filing and sanding which took forever. I accidentally filed down several fingernails into odd shapes while filing my pendent.

This is Marisol from Chile doing the final sanding. She's a lovely quirky lady whom I really enjoyed. I'm glad we got to see her off and on over four ish days.

 
Thankfully, Jim drilled the hole into my fern. It was a delicate step which required hands far more skilled than mine. Here's a picture of him tying the cord into a necklace.

Final product!

I have to say, this ranks as my top NZ experience thus far. Jim picked us up from our hostel (Globetrekkers, also my favorite hostel thus far) and brought us to his home a few minutes away. Opononi (the tiny town we were in) just had a Country Music Festival (which I found oddly amusing) so Jim and his wife Charlotte had lots of their extended family wandering in and out of their home. They were completely natural and at home even with three complete strangers siting in their living room hunched over a piece of bone for 6+ hours. For lunch, Charlotte cooked us an insanely delicious meal of pumpkin soup and the best biscuits I've ever eaten. She sat and ate with us and shared their Maori culture, life, stories, beliefs, etc, with us.

I'm falling in love with Maori culture. It's poetic and beautiful and I can't do their stories justice with my poor memory. Granted, I've only had a taste of it and I haven't been exposed to any negative aspects, but still! Charlotte can recite her family history back 67 generations. Family history is held in high regard. It is respected so much that they only recite their family history when it holds meaning for those who listen. For us bone carvers, the names she would say would hold no meaning for us so Charlotte would never recite her history for us. For other Maori people she would, because a single recognized name in the recitation could be enough to link their histories together, thus connecting their webs of life.

As for the bone carving, Jim told us that as we wear the necklace, the bone pendant absorbs our body oil so that you become a part of it. When you pass it on to the next generation, they will have a part of you with them. Their body oil also becomes a part of the pendant so that both generations (or both people, whomever they may be) have a shared story and are connected through the pendant.