He’s Commissioned for Pope’s Visit : Artist’s Bowl Runneth Over

His handwrought jewelry and artworks have sold in Bullocks Wilshire, Neiman-Marcus, Cartier’s and Gump’s.

And Randy Stromsoe’s sterling silver tea sets and colonial-style pewter tankards grace the private collections of such notables as the prime ministers of Italy and West Germany and the president of France.

He once created a custom wine cooler for singer Elton John.

Now, the San Fernando Valley native has been commissioned to fashion 600 bowls to hold the communion wafers for Pope John Paul II’s large-scale Masses in Los Angeles in September.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles hired the award-winning artist to produce the highly polished ciboria, as the bowls are technically called, for the events in the Memorial Coliseum and Dodger Stadium on the nights of Sept. 15 and 16. An estimated 160,000 Roman Catholics are expected to receive Communion at the two Masses.

Stromsoe’s small studio-workshop and gallery in this picturesque, arty seaside community near the San Simeon Hearst Castle on California 1 are humming with what is the biggest--and perhaps most important--project of his 17-year career. He is one of only a handful of U.S. metal smiths who still practice their trade in the ancient classical style.

Each bowl requires at least two hours to form, polish and hand stamp with the official papal seal and sequential numbers to indicate it is part of a limited edition.

For a donation of about $200, Southland parishes will be able to keep a ciborium as a memento of the pontiff’s visit--the first ever by a Pope to California.

“It’s fun to take part in history. . . . You’re touching part of the world from your own little shop,” Stromsoe, 36, remarked the other day as ribbons of pewter scrap spiraled into the air while he trimmed the edges of a bowl on his lathe.

The idea for him to craft the bowls originated with several Orange County priests who vacation in Cambria and have long admired Stromsoe’s art.

One of them, Father Arthur Holquin of Fountain Valley’s Holy Spirit Parish, is in charge of the liturgy for the papal Mass at the Coliseum.

At first, committee members responsible for the worship services wanted a fancier, cone-shaped ciborium with a lid. And they talked to Stromsoe about making a large, elaborate pewter chalice--at a cost of $3,000 to $5,000--for the Pope to use when he consecrated the wine.

“The younger priests wanted a 1980s, glitzy look,” said Lisa Stromsoe, the silversmith’s wife, who handles the business side of the work.

Function and Economy

But function and economy won over form and elegance.

Stromsoe said the majority of the committee, and especially Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony, “were concerned about not spending money in a showy, flashy way.”

Instead, the Pope will use a “historic chalice,” probably one from a California mission, said Father Douglas Ferraro, chairman for the Dodger Stadium Mass.

The ciboria, each containing about 200 hosts, or wafers, will be carried by priests to stations set up throughout the stadium to administer the sacrament.

Stromsoe said he had been asked by church officials not to reveal how much he is being paid to make the bowls. But the artist said that if $200 is donated for each one, that would “more than cover” the costs.

Stromsoe eschews mass production and automation, techniques that he says have largely taken over metal smithing.

Works of Art

Each ciborium is a work of art that must be individually nursed to perfection, he explained, smiling often as he chatted with visitors in his workshop.

The artist-craftsman began fashioning bowl No. 404 by punching the Pope’s seal, information about the papal visit and the bowl’s number on a flat disc of 14-gauge pewter 10 1/2 inches in diameter. The sheets, weighing about 1 1/2 pounds, are composed of an alloy of 92% tin, 7% antimony and 1% copper.

Next, Stromsoe carefully shapes each bowl on an old lathe, pressing a long steel bar against the disc as it spins rapidly--a technique that he says was handed down from the Chinese.

After a washing and sanding, the emerging vessel is ready for hammering, a painstaking process that Stromsoe learned as an apprentice to the late Porter Blanchard of Los Angeles, a world-renowned master of silver.

Placing the rim of the bowl on an anvil, Stromsoe strikes it rapidly and precisely with a small hammer with a shiny, slightly convex head the size of a quarter. The imprints form a dappled prism pattern on the outside circumference of the bowl, which will be 2 1/2 inches deep and eight inches across when finished. The hammered texture hides fingerprints caused by handling.

About 1,200 hammer blows later, the bowl is ready for washing, trimming, buffing and a final cleaning.

Even this is an art, Stromsoe explained. The washing and wiping of pewter must be done “in a certain direction and motion to establish a fine patina.”

The Stromsoes would like to attend one of the Masses where the pewter master’s handiwork will be prominently displayed. But that appears unlikely unless there is a dispensation.

Neither is Catholic. And only a few of the faithful area parishioners will be admitted.

“So far, we haven’t been offered tickets,” Stromsoe said with a sigh.