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76
winter
|
spr ing
he confesses, before
adding quickly, “I
finally got my act
together and will
celebrate twenty
years of sobriety
come December
third.”
Tallman was born in
Pasadena, where his father,
a gunsmith, owned and operated Antique Firearms, specializing in
restoring antique weaponry, and collecting them from
all over the world. “He made all my toys growing
up,” David says. “My brothers and I were fully
experienced [in weapons] from a cap gun to an
anti-tank rifle. We could make everything in
[my father’s] shop and I started doing that
at a young age.” Which is, of course, how
Tallman developed an interest in making
things with his hands.
When he eventually went out on his own, he
says he “got psychedelicized (by a Dr. Timothy Leary
disciple no less) and didn’t want anything to do with guns.”
He did, however, want to “keep playing with metal and ivory” and
chose to become a dentist. On the way to medical school he ended up in
a Mexican prison and never became a dentist.
Staying in Mexico after his prison stay of some seven
months, he traveled to Cuernavaca [upon the advice
of Dr. Leary] and studied jewelry under a German
count. The next few years – the late 1960s – “were
a blur of high-end jewelry making and late-night
partying.”
It was a car accident on Toro Canyon – “lots of
recovery surgeries and plenty of ‘pain killers’” – that
drove him into harder drugs and alcohol abuse, and
which took him five years to extricate himself
from.
David doesn’t own a computer or a credit
card. “I have a very humble, simple life
these days,” he admits. He has only one
functioning eye, so he works in high-powered magnification under his
glasses. But he smiles and says, “I’m still able to do my jewelry and go
fishing, and that’s all that really matters.”
David’s love for fishing is evident. His home is lined with fishing
poles and lures. Many of those lures he crafted himself using filed-
down mother of pearl. Pictures are scattered on the floor of David
holding up every kind of fish in the ocean, especially species found
right inside our Channel. His passion for the ocean is present in much
of his jewelry.
“I have such a great passion for this,” he stresses, adding quietly that
“my work is better than ever. I’m a silent, powerful act,” he concludes,
“that nobody knows exists.”
We don’t know how much work he has left in
him, but our feeling is that whoever ends up
buying a new David Tallman piece is likely to
have purchased one of his best creations. We
have no doubt too that whatever it is, the
object is likely to become a talisman for that
lucky collector.
(All the pieces featured in the accompanying photos
were loaned back for illustrating this article. David
Tallman is available by appointment only and can be
reached at 805-969-9335.)