Dave Taylor's Rosetta Stone

#167 Dave's Rosetta Stone 04/22/2012

I created this for Dave Taylor on his retirement,
or as Dave put it, "I'm not being retired, I'm being rewired."

Dave has been a special client for me, and is a very special person. As one of the Abbott managers put it, "I've never worked at a place where so many people asked me if I knew a certain person before I worked for Abbott, and people would ask me ... Do you know Dave Taylor?"

I made pieces #37 Negro Island Light 05/06/2000 and #38 Trinston 05/12/2000 for Dave. Before I made these for Dave, I used to just put my initials (EEM) on the lower right of each piece. Dave suggested that since these would last for so long, my initials were insufficient. He wanted me to really sign it. So I gave him a full Edward E. Montalvo signature on the lower left, and have pretty much signed every piece there since.

The front of  #167 reads David Taylor, Career Mentor in English, then the same thing using Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and then Chinese. The Chinese Characters are pronounced, "Da/Way  Tai/Lah, Gi/Yah/Sen/Ya/Liang/Tao/Shi". The back reads, "Dave, thank you for your early and ongoing support. My Best. Ed Montalvo"

I got the idea for this piece from watching a Teaching Company course on DVD about "Ancient Egypt" after learning from Prof. Robert Brier about the importance of the Rosetta Stone to deciphering ancient Egyptian writing. I have told Dave that these pieces are expected to last 500 years so therefore, it seemed perfect to make Dave his own personal Rosetta stone. Maybe 500 years from now people will still be asking...Do you know who Dave Taylor is?

Unusually, this piece is made from pine. I typically avoided pine for wood burning because the grain is sappy and difficult to work with, but this purchased blank plaque was the perfect size for the hieroglyphs so I decided to use it for this special gift.

In time, I will provide more information about Dave's other purchased pieces in my Blog.

Note: The pictures of the piece show the metal table I use for wood burning. I use mouse pads to prevent scratching the pieces. My favorite mouse pad is the M.C. Escher hands drawing hands one in the center. I find that one helps me keep focused while handling the hot wood burning tool.