Adam Whitney Pod Cup 014

Britannia Silver .958, 24k gold gilding

3.5" x 3.5" x 3" 

Adam Whitney is a Metalsmith who embraces traditional silversmithing techniques of raising along with chasing and repousse. These long established processes enable Adam to shape sheet metal into seamless dimensional sculptures and hollowware. Through historical and ancient metalwork Adam finds inspiration for his projects and enjoys exploring and rediscovering the depth of his time-honored craft.

Artist’s Biography

It is always the complexity of an object that attracts and inspires me, and the complexity of an object that I want to achieve in its final form.

Achievement in metalsmithing happens, if at all, at a glacial pace. Around 2017, after some time teaching in Malaysia and returning to my family home in Vermont, I began to prioritize my studio practice, moving energetically away from production and collaboration work, challenging myself to reach the highest level I could in my techniques: raising, chasing, and repoussé. With this intention, I organized a lifestyle that freed up my time to work in my studio and take advantage of residencies. In this new mode, I started making the first two in what would become a five-piece series of Sea Monster Stirrup Cups. It was at this point that I began to commit to myself as an artist.

I had become fascinated by the sea monsters drawn by cartographers on 16th and 17th century maps, illustrating the real and imagined properties of what dwelled in the ocean. The stirrup cup, otherwise known as a parting or hunting cup, was served to the hunter or traveler (still on horseback, in his stirrups), and typically made in the shape of an animal to be hunted. The fear of the unknown, taking a risk and departing in a new direction (leaving my production work, focusing on art, and eventually starting my three-year residency at Penland) is embodied in this work. Over the next three years, I created four silver cups. I will eventually complete the final one in gold. 

What I make and how I make it takes many intensive labor hours of hammering, unwieldy and difficult-to-acquire equipment, space, high material expense, and physical toll. Therefore the objects that I choose to create mean a great deal to me. Manifesting them is a years-long proposition. By the time I am ready to make the final iteration, I know the dance exactly, and know how the material will neither lose or be added to in mass in its crafting. The Stirrup Cups are just one example, and they provide an insight into my studio life, which is populated by both finished volumetric objects and the numbered copper multiples that I have crafted along the way to the final object whose making has been calibrated exactly. Therefore any form I make has to be honest to me, somehow, and each one, in series, is that.