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Widow’s Mites of Mark 12-41

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow put more into the treasury than all the others. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

These coins are bronze lepta and prutot of Alexander Jannaeus, the Hasmonean King of Judaea from 103 to 76 B.C. Although these coins were minted long before Christ’s lifetime, they were still in circulation during the first century A.D. They were the lowest denomination coins circulated at the time of Jesus.

I’m making Christmas/Chanukah Gift Packets with these incredible 2,000 year-old genuine ancient Judean coins that were in circulation during the time of Jesus, and some dating to the time of the Macabees, and they’re only $35 a pop!

These are NOT replicas or reproductions. They are the Real Thing, and there are NOT that many around now, due to the war in that area of the world, and there’s no sign of it letting up anytime soon. Continue reading

For Your Convenience…

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“Country Road Along Canal, Amsterdam 1645” comes out differently every time.

I’ve given my sources for my metal embossing projects, so that you can bring your prices down, down, down, to the level where there’s some profit in it and it’s worth your while to devote time, energy and talent to the thing.

But what if you DON’T intend to quit the day job and sell your embossed metal artwork to thousands of satisfied customers??? What if you don’t intend to order and await shipments of industrial foil, huge cartons of coin-flips and enormous quantities of sales tags? For you, there is a VERY good answer.

I make kits that are attuned to specific projects. You get all the materials and supplies you need to make 21 finished disks mounted in “flip” coin-frames for sale — that’s one to wear in a bezel or carry as a pocket-pal or purse-pal in an acrylic capsule, if you decide to use those items.

ALL MY DESIGNS COME IN ONLY ONE SIZE, made especially for the dollar-sized disk & bezel. You can re-size them as you wish. You will do better by just sort of roughly and generally copying the lines rather than trying to trace them, but some folks won’t have it any other way, so for them, you’ll have to shrink the thing down on photoshop and print it out on a TRANSFER paper, I suppose.

If you work this system rightly, you’ll develop your own “iconographics” and get them into the metal form. The whole point here is to utilize “reductionism” in order to simplify the form, as Cangialosi would have said it. You can also understand the concept in the following Matisse-ian way:

“EXPRESS THE SUBJECT WITH THE FEWEST POSSIBLE LINES.” Continue reading