After the festive season there tend to be empty bottles and some of them had wire wraps to hold the corks in. Drawing and painting have doodling as a slightly mindless way of expressing whatever is going on inside. It seems to me that every art form should have an equivalent to the doodle. The equivalent in sculpture is making shapes out of the wire wraps from champagne or other drinks. Now if I could only find all those other ones that I have done over the years I could have an exhibition :-)
 

As the inventor of Champagne Wire Sculpture (or at least as the inventor of the name) I am claiming the right to setting the guidelines as to what is proper and right in acceptable society circles. Here are the main points:

• The essential character of the wire, as removed from the bottle, should be kept. That means that the four "legs" should be used in some way and the spare wire used for whatever else the sculpture requires.
• It is permissable to rewind one of the "legs" to get the excess wire in the right place. This is necessary to be able to make a chair. This instruction will only be meaningful to someone who actually has a wire and tries to make a chair.
• No special tools should be used in unwrapping or wrapping the wire or in otherwise shaping it. It is permissable, assuming that the host or hostess allows it, to use a fork or other dining utensil for shaping the wire. The discovery of plier marks on a Champagne Wire Sculpture should result in unpleasantries to the perpetrator.
• Additional items that are genuinely found at the dining table may be incorporated into the sculpture. This includes such items as tooth picks as the skier's ski poles and the circular plastic piece from the top of the cork wrapper used in the padded chair above. I made a little scarf for the skier out of a section of red table napkin but it looked a bit too showy.

 Return to Ray Tomes index page