Autumn Foliage
Every year around this time, the best goldsmiths on the planet visit our Canadian prairies.
These artists install themselves with no roof other than the sky, displaying their works on a huge worktable. Us, the residents of the province witness, every day, the evolution of their masterpieces.
They use noble metals and their alloys, gold, silver, bronze, copper, which they complement with precious or semi-precious stones.
There, in their very extensive workshop, we can see samples of aquamarines, quartz, topaz, garnets, sapphires, which they masterfully integrate into their intricate creations.
When visiting the fair, the vibrations and incessant murmurs produced by their work instruments are felt on the skin and perceived by the ears.
Like leaves shaken by the wind, you can hear the ancient tinkling of the chisel, the glacial noise of the bevel burnisher, the creak of the sandpaper that leaves a luminous carpet on the land.
In the farthest part of the workshop, an elderly and revered teacher patiently waits for the diamond dust to be released so she can complete her magnum opus.
It is finally here, the first snows spreading over the mountains.
The “rockies” silhouetted against the horizon, finally display their majestic diadem.
The term goldsmith, orfebre in Spanish, aurifaber, has its Latin roots in auri, “gold” and faber “architect.”
Goldsmiths, architects of gold, welding our autumns following the designs of the great teacher, Mother Nature.
Leonor Henríquez (Caracas, Venezuela) Civil Engineer by training (UCAB 1985), writer and apprentice poet by vocation. From her time in engineering emerged her Office Stories (1997), another way of seeing the corporate world. Her latest publications include reflections on grief, Hopecrumbs (2020) (www.hopecrumbs.com) and “The Adventures of Chispita” (2021) (www.chispita.ca) an allegory of life inside Mom’s belly.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com