Sitting at a workbench in the basement of his Wellfleet house, Alan Hight runs a hand over a glittering pile of dozens of silver spoons and forks. He’s searching for a starting point for his next project. His eyes roam thoughtfully over the ornate handles, delicate prongs, and shallow bellies. Then he selects a relatively ordinary-looking silver-plated spoon.
Armed with an iron vise, hammers and pliers, mandrels, handmade bracelet molds, and a fine jewelry saw, Hight turns old utensils into earrings, bracelets, necklaces, rings, and wind chimes.
For the piece he has chosen, he has in mind a “whale tail” — the belly of the spoon takes the shape of the flukes, then he’ll twist the handle into a bracelet, or cut it off and loop the remainder, making a pendant for a necklace. The whale tail is one of his specialties, along with the whimsy-legged octopuses he fashions out of forks.
Hight moved to this house in Wellfleet in 1974. He grew up near Brockton. When he was 19 — “and a half,” he says — he joined the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army. “I’ve always loved the water,” he says. “I figured I’d do that.”
He spent four years in the service, stationed on ships in San Francisco and San Diego and serving for 16 months in Guam. When he got out, he moved to Wellfleet to become a partner in Bay Sails Marine with his childhood friend Lyle Butts. Christine Rogers lived next door to the business. The two were introduced by one of her brothers at Newcomb Hollow Beach. They’ve been married for 52 years now and have three children.
Upstairs, Christine is entertaining their youngest grandchild, Rebecca. The child is crying, but Hight says he can’t hear it. “I was a radio operator for four years,” he says. “My hearing is shot from that.”
The resounding clangs of hammer strikes fill the room. Hight is flattening the spoon against a chunk of iron. A disk of leather between the iron and the utensil prevents damage to the face of the spoon. Satisfied, he lifts the spoon to the light. With a ruler, he measures its bowl, nearly flat, then draws the shape of a whale’s tail on it with a marker.
He secures the stem in the vise and brings out his jeweler’s saw, the sharp blade impossibly thin and precise. The saw cuts through the metal like warm butter. The whine of the instrument gets louder as it cuts nearer the edge of the spoon.
Hight was a volunteer firefighter and paramedic in Wellfleet for 22 years before he became the fire chief in 1997. When he retired in 2005, he says, “all of a sudden I was at home going like this” — he twiddles his thumbs. “I needed something to do.”
In 2010, at the Wellfleet Flea Market, he encountered a display of wind chimes made out of spoons and forks. He came home and started working out designs of his own. Rings, bracelets, and necklaces followed, most inspired by the ocean. He’s always been good with his hands, he says, but he’s grateful to Jesse Mia Horowitz, who owns the Jewelry Studio in town, for teaching him soldering and annealing — how to melt and soften metals and bend them to realize his designs.
In the summers, Hight sells his work at the flea market. “This is my social thing,” he says. “I do craft shows — two in Provincetown. I do Truro Treasures. I do Preservation Hall. I’m busy!” Christine, who wears his earrings, is his bookkeeper. She also decorates his wind chimes with beads and makes small bags out of scrap fabric for Hight to package his sold wares in.
Hight is wearing an octopus pendant around his neck, the first he ever made. He fingers its looping legs — it’s simple compared to the ones he’s made since. This one’s not for sale, though more than once he’s sold a bracelet off his own wrist or a ring he’s been wearing.
With the spoon cut into the shape of a whale tail, Hight sets to buffing. When the edges are softened enough, he brings the tail to the iron. “I’m partial to texture,” he says. With a rounded hammer, he taps facets onto the metal. With the handle snapped and the remainder looped, the piece might be a pendant for a necklace.
Being a maker has turned him into an accidental collector. “I’ve got silverware like you wouldn’t believe,” Hight says, surveying his workshop. The loose utensils twinkle everywhere. In a corner of the basement, wooden boxes with velvety interiors house sets of forks, spoons, and knives. He finds them at thrift stores and estate sales and buys some from online sellers.
Every part of each piece of silverware endures the scrutiny of the artist’s eye. The elaborate stems of demitasse spoons might be dangling earrings — that is, if Hight can find a matching pair. With one prong twisted, forks become elephants. A spoon, sliced and folded in on itself, becomes a flower. There’s a vintage pair of delicate sugar tongs. “Nobody would ever use this again,” says Hight. He’ll cut the pinching hands off and make earrings out of them. The arms of the tongs he’ll bend into a cuff bracelet.
“I sometimes hate to cut them,” he says. “But I’m going to make something beautiful.”
