Fox shows up at Foxburg library
FOXBURG — It’s not every day that a package from Edinburgh, Scotland, shows up at the Foxburg Free Library, so it came as quite a shock when such a parcel was received in March.
“I was very surprised,” Caroll Timblin said.
Timblin, the assistant librarian, said she had no idea why the library was receiving a package with a Scottish postmark.
When she opened it, she found a glass fox, about three inches tall and about seven inches long, made by glass artist Rachel Elliott.
Brenda Beikert, director of the Foxburg Free Library, said, “I had no idea that it was coming in the mail.”
While Beikert had been in contact with the artist, Beikert didn’t have an inkling the library was going to be sent its own glass fox.
“I had e-mailed Rachel after finding a picture of one of her foxes with shamrocks in it and wanted to use the picture for our Facebook page,” Beikert said. “After e-mailing back and forth a couple of times, the fox just arrived in the mail.”
The fox had a long journey before it showed up at the library.
“The outline for the fox took about six months to draw to get the slink right before cutting, and then the different patterns can come to mind quickly or again take months to design,” the glass artist, said.
Elliott, owner of Rachel Elliott Glassworks in Edinburgh, has been working with glass since 2000 and in 2009 opened her studio.
“I cut out the foxes and other animals using an industrial process called water-jet cutting,” she said.
“This involves a computer-controlled machine abrading through the glass with a jet of water at about 50,000-psi pressure mixed with an abrasive garnet grit,” Elliott said.
Elliott lets an engineering company do the industrial cutting while she watches.
Elliott said, “The patterns are exposed onto a screen, and then I hand-print enamels onto the surface of the glass fox before kiln firing it on so it doesn’t fade or wash off.”
A lot time goes into the finished product, but the end product is worth all the effort, Elliott said.
“For me, the finished sculpture merges traditional stained glass techniques with the very modern computer-cutting technology,” Elliott said.
Now that the library has the fox, the staff has ordered a display case and have found a way to get people involved with the library’s new addition.
“We’re going to get a display case to keep it safe, so as soon as we get that, the fox will be on display,” Beikert said.
Once the library is able to get the fox displayed, it will have a contest to name the fox.
“We’ll ask people to submit names for the fox, along with their name,” Beikert said. “After we gather submissions for about a month or so, then we’ll go through them, and the library board members will choose a winner.”
Anyone who visits the library will be able to submit a name.
There also will be a picture of the fox on the library’s Facebook page, where submissions will be taken, or suggestions for a name can be e-mailed to the library at foxburgfreelibrary@gmail.com.
