Learning Through Making

Experimental production of stone tools

Tag: Blue

I’ve made something I like. Again!

May 18, 2025 / / 0 Comments

We have just come back from a week in Athens, and the main thing I brought home was a large disc of blue glass, bought at the flea market for five Euros.

Anyway, I found time to hide in the lab for an hour or so and came away with this very nice blue ovate handaxe.

Everything worked well. Turning the edges with a hard hammer, and then thinning using an antler hammer. This is the second iteration, initially it was larger but wonky.

I brought the wonky version home, lived with it for 24 hours and then the following day finished it off so that it is a shape I can live with. I am currently thinking about the difference in experience between my work with emails, spreadsheets and budgets, and escaping into the lab and the satisfaction of making something beautiful. I suspect it is something to do with what that famous stone tool specialist, Karl Marx, termed ‘Alienation’. To be continued!

The Blue Handaxe – Materials

February 22, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Blue, Glass, Handaxe

Yesterday we did some filming. Howard (film maker) and Jex (sound person) at the bottle tip. I had brought some props with me to explain the overall idea. Enter, my current favourite large handaxe (above) to illustrate where I want to go with things.

Next up was my best glass handaxe made from the base of a vase. This was to illustrate the limitation of size of materials, with this being exceptional, but still not very big.

Third up was this (presumably) 1950s Vicks bottle of amazing blue glass. This was to illustrate the rare blue material I wanted to collect in order to then work with Nacho to produce a blue glass block.

Anyway, after the above introduction and some bottle tip footage Howard wanted some live action blue glass finding moments. This was going to be difficult as over many visits I had picked the area clean, or so I thought. I found quite a lot, mainly a pale or lighter blue, but nevertheless illustrating the material gathering process authentically, which is what we both wanted. Let’s see what Howard makes of phase one.

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