One uses a small piece of silver or other metal wire to make marks on a prepared paper. The paper can be prepared with something as simple as gouache, or a more complex ground can be made from various glues and pigments mixed with either bone ash or marble dust. These grounds have a tooth, and as the metalpoint is drawn over the surface, bits of metal are abraded off initially leaving behind a gray line. Value is built up through hatching and cross hatching. Silver is also highly reflective, lending an ethereal effect to the drawing. During the course of my project these characteristics became a metaphor for a plant’s evolving status: by the plants extirpation due to habitat destruction; its adaption to a changing environment or as a pressed, dried plant became an artifact on a herbarium page.
It has been said that Emily Dickinson’s herbarium contains the seeds of her floral inspired poetry; there are over 550 references to flowers in her writings. Dickinson’s herbarium shows her love of flowers, her horticultural interests and she expresses their language throughout her poetry. Although her herbarium has no great value to science, and to date no written record documenting her finds has been discovered, it remains a silent witness to what was growing in the Amherst area during the years she collected her plants.
Bibliography
The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Thomas H. Johnson, Editor. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1958.
OR :The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Mabel Loomis Todd, Editor. Dover Publications, Inc. Public Domain.
The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Reading Edition. R.W. Franklin, Editor. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1999. (Numbers preceded by Fr indicate the poems from this edition)
OR: Poems of Emily Dickinson. Mabel Loomis Todd, T.W. Higginson, Editors. Public Domain; download from the Internet.
Emily Dickinson Herbarium, A Facsimile Edition. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2006. (Harvard has digitized the facsimile; it is over 175 years old and is too fragile to view in person)
Drawing in Silver and Gold, Leonardo to Jasper Johns. Stacey Sell and Hugo Chapman, Editors. National Gallery of Art. Princeton University Press. 2015. (See https://www.nga.gov/ for information on the 2015 show and metalpoint drawing, under the Past Exhibitions heading)
Silverpoint and Metalpoint Drawing: A Complete Guide to the Medium. Susan Schwalb and Tom Mazzullo. Routledge.2019.
Emily Dickinson Museum
280 Main Street,
Amherst, MA 01002
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/
Poems from the Franklin Edition:
Indian Pipe- Fr1193, Fr 1513
Orchids- Fr31
Fringed Gentian- Fr 21, 26, 520, 1458, 1588, 1710