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Dragon's Breath - A Hans Meevis Sculpture

This sculpture contemplates the symbiotic relationship of air transformed into energy which in turn creates life force. The Dragon's Breath forces air / steam into the oscillating Steam Engine, which in turn incubates the dragon's eggs as the rest of the dragon family guard and protect the new life form.

Part of the inspiration

I don’t actually know where or why the creative process starts, except that I enjoy making it. It’s got to be for the love, if nothing else.
About 230 hours of work.
Weighs about 240 grams.

The Construction

The start. A laminated slices of black Jasper, Sugilite and red Jasper,  carved into a dragon embryo, which is then laminated with silver to form the flywheel of the steam engine. The base is made out of  Onyx, Sugilite and Chrysoprase.
	I carved the cylinder out of clear Brazilian quartz. I love carving quartz. So hard and so shiny. In this picture I am drilling the cylinder out with a diamond core drill.
Progress of the gemstone steam engine.
The piston is also a Dragon ( this is a engine, don’t forget). The top of the cylinder is a faceted amethyst laminated to a quartz dome that has a ball of fine gold inside. It looks like a little bubble that trembles all the time. Then I made the breathing Daddy Dragon. The Daddy Dragon, like the Mommy Dragon has a cavity running through the central body, entering from the bottom of the tail, and will supply the steam ( or air)  to the engine. I made the base plate shown in the picture larger at  later stage. This type of project always evolves as it ages and many designs and components are redesigned and remade. For instance, the base plate was made three times, the quartz cylinder carved twice, the base mountings for the breathing dragons four times.
Side view showing the air intake pipe that leads into Daddy Dragon. All four child Dragons and the side legs are screwed in with silver screws that are set with tiny Sandawana emeralds. Here you can see the emeralds also holding the child Dragons in place. The baby Dragon flywheel is held in position with a cinnamon sapphire that I facetted which comes from Tanzania.
Here are the silver components excluding the steam engine. The final base plate, made out of 3mm silver. First heavily textured with varying sized ball frazers. Then gilded with 24 carat gold foil. This is in actual fact how a close up of Dragon skin looks like. Trust me, I have friends that are dragons so I have seen this before. The belly of Dragon’s Breath. With my stamp in the middle, which says HM and meevis.com.
In all it's glory symbolically placed on a red glass base and specially created display case for the Dragon's Breath Art Piece

Dragon's Breath - A Hans Meevis Sculpture

Completely handmade  metal and gemstone sculpture

Size : 90 x 80 x 60 cm

More art sculptures by Hans Meevis