Her Majesty Adelheit of Atlantia put out a request shortly before her coronation for a pewter badge depicting a corgi with a pendant letter A. I offered to make it because it seemed like an interesting challenge (I had never made a period pin back before). I consulted Kunera for some historical examples and then set Lady Stella di Silvestri to the task of carving the primary mold. She did a far better job than I could have on making the corgi part of the badge identifiable, with only a little detail work done by me.
The mold for the main body of the badge was made in three parts to accommodate the pin on the back. I experimented first with making a pin back for my household badge, which I had been putting off for years. Once I got the concept down, I set up the corgi mold with poured pewter registration pins and carved the channel for the pin back into one side of the two-part mold back. After a little deepening of the banner part of the badge to improve flow, the badges poured up quite nicely. The mold for the pendant “A” was a simple one-piece affair.
We presented the badges and the molds to Her Majesty at War of the Wings, packed nicely into a beautiful box with pyrographic decoration on the front done by Lady Emelina le Norreys. It was a fun and educational project for all involved.
The three part badge mold
The badge mold opened
Mold for the pendant A
The first pin back experiment
An army of corgis ready to unleash
The presentation box